How to Kill Your Best Friend

This wicked crime thriller from Elliott (The Missing Years) unfolds from the first-person perspectives of Georgie and Bronwyn, old college friends who have reunited on a Southeast Asia resort island that was owned by another college friend, Lissa, and Lissa’s husband, Jem. Georgie and Bronwyn are attending a memorial service for Lissa, who apparently drowned three months earlier during a swim in an island cove rumored to be the home of a sea serpent, though Lissa’s body was never found. After the service on the cove’s beach, odd things start to happen. On the mirror in Bronwyn’s hotel bathroom mirror, someone scrawls in lipstick “ITS YOUR FAULT BITCH,” and Georgie survives a potentially deadly encounter with the legendary monster. Financial fraud; questions about the death of Lissa’s first husband, Graeme, from an allergic reaction after he was unable to find his EpiPen; and a murder stir the pot further before the twisty plot reaches a satisfying resolution. Elliott makes her characters feel like real people. Fans of Lucy Foley’s The Guest List will be compulsively turning pages. Agent: Marcy Posner, Folio Literary. (Aug.)