Give Me Your Hand

Description

"No one makes better thrillers out of the relationships unique to teenage girls than Abbott... It's [Give Me Your Hand] pure suspense hinging on terrifyingly real characters." Vulture You told each other everything. Then she told you too much. Kit has risen to the top of her profession and is on the brink of achieving everything she wanted. She hasn't let anything stop her. But now someone else is standing in her way - Diane. Best friends at seventeen, their shared ambition made them inseparable. Until the day Diane told Kit her secret - the worst thing she'd ever done, the worst thing Kit could imagine - and it blew their friendship apart. Kit is still the only person who knows what Diane did. And now Diane knows something about Kit that could destroy everything she's worked so hard for. How far would Kit go, to make the hard work, the sacrifice, worth it in the end? What wouldn't she give up? Diane thinks Kit is just like her. Maybe she's right. Ambition: it's in the blood... PRAISE FOR GIVE ME YOUR HAND "[Give Me Your Hand] should cement [Abbott's] position as one of the most intelligent and daring novelists working in the crime genre today." New York Times Book Review "[A] nuanced tale of soured friendships, blood-soaked ambition, and desperate murders from Thriller Award-winner Abbott...No writer can touch Abbott in the realm of twisted desire and relationships between women, both intimate and feral." Publishers Weekly, starred review "In Abbott's deft hands, friendship is fused to rivalry, and ambition to fear, with an unsettling level of believability. It will take more than a cold shower to still the blood thumping in your ears when you finish this." Kirkus, Starred Review "Once again, Abbott plunges us deep into a vividly realized world of intense competition and creates life-or-death stakes where we wouldn't have known to look for them...this is a brilliant riff on hard science, human nature, and the ultimate unknowability of the human brain." Booklist, Starred Review

Megan Abbott is the author of The End of Everything, Dare Me (CWA Steel Dagger shortlist) and The Fever (Strand Critics Award for Best Novel of the Year and International Thriller Writers Best Hardcover Novel of the Year). She is co-writer of the smash-hit Sky Atlantic drama The Deuce. She lives in Queens, New York.

Beautifully written and unbearably tense, this is a standout study of ambition, rivalry and fear. * Guardian * Megan Abbott is one of the smartest storytellers around and her thought-provoking ideas lift her books to another level. * Daily Mail * A finely crafted story of obsession . . . [The] prose has the vividness of cinema, which is no coincidence. Abbott is an expert on film noir and, as with the classic movies of 1930s and 1940s Hollywood, the plot of her own novel twists like a python. * Financial Times * A mesmerizing psychological thriller. -- Books of the Year * Guardian * [A] searing, fierce novel of female friendship and ambition. * Observer * [Give Me Your Hand] should cement [Abbott's] position as one of the most intelligent and daring novelists working in the crime genre today. -- Ruth Ware, author of In A Dark, Dark Wood * New York Times Book Review * The Queen of US noir serves up a suitably spiky tale of ambition and betrayal. -- Best Beach Reads for Summer * Independent * Megan Abbott at her very best. Cool, crisp, chilling. -- Paula Hawkins SO. GOOD. A tense, pitch-perfect thriller about ambition and female friendship and a forensic examination of what it takes for women to rise through male-dominated spaces. It felt in places like a dark inversion of The Secret History. -- Erin Kelly, author of He Said/She Said Give Me Your Hand is sublime. -- Laura Lippman, author of Life Sentences What THESE black shadows under my eyes? Why they're courtesy of Give Me Your Hand. SO UNBEARABLY TENSE. -- Tammy Cohen, author of When She Was Bad A psychological thriller about women in science, twisted female relationships and toxic secrets, Give Me Your Hand is just irresistible. I devoured it with escalating discomfort. Abbott's writing is elegant, her themes expansive and her research utterly convincing. An addictive, unsettling and distinctive read - I loved it! -- Lucy Atkins, author of The Other Child Dark, daring and smart, this psychological thriller is ragingly good. * Psychologies * Give Me Your Hand is dark, unsettling, brilliantly tense, and I raced through it without pausing for breath. -- Paula Daly, author of The Mistake I Made Megan's writing is masterful, suspenseful and believable . . . The suspense does not let up - I was gripped from the first page. -- Debbie Howells, author of The Bones of You Give Me Your Hand is dark, smart, twisty, and thoroughly addictive. -- Tom Perrotta, author of Little Children While Megan Abbott's magnetic new novel mines themes of ambition, competition, excellence, and friendship, what perhaps struck me the most was its exploration of the long, undeterrable reach of memory. Give Me Your Hand is darkly effective, uneasy-making, and beautifully, absorbingly written. -- Meg Wolitzer, author of The Interestings I adore Megan Abbott and devoured this new one in one sitting! -- Bookriot.com Abbot writes female characters who are smart and complex and capable of very bad things . . . I read it with my shoulders scrunched . . . genuinely awestruck by every twist and turn . . . It's bloody horrifying and absorbing and so very good. * Marie Claire * I loved this book-for its cleverness and fast pacing. I was compelled to read quickly, the plot construction was brilliant, the characters sharply drawn. -- Jane Shemilt, author of Daughter Abbott deliciously draws out tension . . . a baroque thriller. * Washington Post * Megan Abbott proves she's still the queen of uncovering the dark complexity of the female psyche . . . It uses all the strengths she's known for and gives them more room to develop. * Los Angeles Review of Books * [A] fiery new novel . . . Even if you have committed no crimes and harbor no weighty secrets, this book will leave you nauseous with the memories of your own manic, pulsing teenage nature, the emotions you barely kept in check and the ones that overflowed. * Slate * Abbott is expert at the twists and turns of a good thrillers, and a long the way she's brilliant at examining complex mindsets, the subconscious drives of her main characters . . . Sublime stuff. * Big Issue * If I never write another book again, it is Megan Abbott's fault. Because I just read absolute, flat out perfection. -- Attica Locke, author of Black Water Rising Abbott's talent lies in dissecting the complicated tension between women at any age . . . Abbott excavates the wariness women can feel toward one another to create internal psychological drama. Plenty of blood is spilled in Abbott's book. But the paranoia of whether to trust a frenemy proves even more compelling. * TIME Magazine * The latest thriller from the ever-impressive Megan Abbott . . . Abbott sows suspense by shifting between past and present, demonstrating how life's earlier acts affect future ones. * Wall Street Journal * A spectacular thriller . . . Give Me Your Hand is a nuanced and atmospheric story about the lure of big dreams, especially for women. * NPR *