Suspenseful and cinematic, New York Times bestseller Bittersweet exposes the gothic underbelly of an idyllic world of privilege and an outsider's hunger to belong.
On scholarship at a prestigious East Coast college, ordinary Mabel Dagmar is surprised to befriend her roommate, the beautiful, wild, blue-blooded Genevra Winslow. Ev invites Mabel to spend the summer at Bittersweet, her cottage on the Vermont estate where her family has been holding court for more than a century. Mabel falls in love with midnight skinny-dipping, the wet dog smell that lingers near the yachts, and the moneyed laughter that carries across the still lake while fireworks burst overhead.
Before she knows it, she has everything she's ever wanted: friendship, a boyfriend, access to wealth, and, most of all, for the first time in her life, the sense that she belongs. But as Mabel becomes an insider, a terrible discovery leads to shocking violence and reveals what the Winslows may have done to keep their power intact--and what they might do to anyone who threatens them. Mabel must choose: either expose the ugliness surrounding her and face expulsion from paradise, or keep the family's dark secrets and make Ev's world her own.
MIRANDA BEVERLY-WHITTEMORE is the author of three other novels: June; Set Me Free, which won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, given annually for the best book of fiction by an American woman; and The Effects of Light. A recipient of the Crazyhorse Prize in Fiction, she lives and writes in Brooklyn.
"What begins a little like Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep quickly warps into a sickly addictive thriller...think ABC's Revenge when it was good, only more scandalous...With books like Bittersweet to stuff in beach bags, it's beginning to feel a lot more like summer. A-" - Entertainment Weekly, Stephan Lee
"Beverly-Whittemore has crafted a page-turner riddled with stubborn clues, a twisty plot and beguiling characters." - Kirkus
"Evokes Gone Girl with its exploration of dark secrets and edge-of-your-seat twists." - Entertainment Weekly, Lanford Beard
"Takes the reader inside the glamorous world of the super-wealthy, where everything is not as it seems, and dark, long-buried family secrets gradually make their way to the surface. ...its strength lies in its elements of mystery. The result is a page-turner that will keep readers guessing until the end." - BookPage
"Beverly-Whittemore captures both the idyllic beauty of a Vermont summer and its dark shadows ...gothic tangles wind the plot more and more tightly. ...A suspenseful tale of corruption and bad behavior among wealthy New Englanders. Readers who enjoy coming-of-age stories featuring dark secrets that affect generations will find much that appeals here." - Library Journal
"In the tradition of The Great Gatsby, Miranda Beverly-Whittemore's heroine is an outsider invited into the secret, labyrinthine world of the super-rich--but the twist is, you never met such debauched people as the Winslows. Bittersweet is a satisfyingly dramatic, super-juicy read." - Jenna Blum, New York Times and internationally bestselling author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers
