Who We Were in the Dark

Told through alternating past and present perspectives, Taylor’s (A Map for Wrecked Girls) character-driven mystery centers four teens who meet three times a year at a secluded vacation destination, until one of them mysteriously goes missing. After siblings Nora, 14, and Wesley Sharpe, 16, reunite with their long-absent father to spend a week at his lakeside vacation home on Donner Lake, they continue to visit during various school breaks over the next two years. During their first trip, they befriend idiosyncratic Grace Lombardi, 16, who lives next door, and acrophobic Rand Elliot, 15. Grace is the group’s glue, effortlessly pulling them back together even after months apart, but her sudden disappearance causes tension, and the remaining teens struggle to maintain their relationships without her. Though the narrative, which begins after Grace goes missing, can jump confusingly between pre-disappearance and the present day, it’s Grace’s arrestingly written personality, and the years the protagonists spend together eating oysters at night on the roof of the local hotel, leaping off cliffs into the lake, breaking into a boathouse to sneak champagne, and watching outdoor movies under the stars, that serve as the heart and soul of this atmospheric read. All main characters read as white. Ages 14–up. Agent: Melissa Sarver White, Folio Literary. (July)