Cherry - by Rose Wilding (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

It starts as a love song. It ends with murder.

1999

Gifty is a woman adrift in the wake of her wife's death. She's living in stasis, unable to bring herself to enter the bedroom where Helen died after a long illness. Her therapist tells her to confront her grief, but instead she wanders the streets looking for someone from her past.

Fallen nineties pop star Isobel has done everything she can to reinvent herself. Gone is the girlish make-up and provocative manner. When she lands a job working for a middle-class family, she decides to embody the perfect nanny.

Ally has always prided herself on running a successful business and being a good parent to her two children. But when her husband announces that he is leaving them to work in Indonesia for six months, and hires Isobel without consulting her, she is left angry and struggling with her chronic illness.

The women soon become tangled in a dangerous web of obsession and infatuation. Someone is going to die. The question is: who?

Review Quotes

"Scintillating... Wilding's marvelous evocation of the late 20th century plunges readers headlong into the characters' experiences with party drugs, sexual experimentation, and a fickle music industry. The result is a blood-soaked riot."
-Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"[A] riveting, Talented Mr. Ripley-esque thriller."
-The Minnesota Star Tribune

"Rose Wilding writes with a rare and unsettling honesty. A feverish spiral of grief, desire, and betrayal, laced with unease and menace. Cherry is the sort of aching book that smolders to the very last page. A lethal and seductive thriller."
-Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb

Praise for Speak of the Devil

"Mesmerizing and unflinchingly dark...Wilding is a powerful new talent whose captivating characters will stay with readers long after they've finished the book." -Rachel Kapelke-Dale, author of The Ingenue

"Fans of Lucy Foley and Ruth Ware won't want to miss this one." -Nora Murphy, author of The Favor

"A very accomplished debut...I loved it." -Harriet Tyce, bestselling author of The Lies You Told

"A mesmerising, moving story that is impossible to look away from." -Gytha Lodge, bestselling author of Little Sister

"With seven unreliable narrators, the twists in this one will keep readers guessing." -Parade

"This cautionary tale satisfies in its culmination of long-overdue justice for spurned women." -Library Journal (starred)

"A clever and tight thriller that demands to be read in one setting." -Crime Reads

"[The women's] stories converge in a way that will appeal to Kate Atkinson's readers...This debut author is one to watch." -FirstCLUE

About the Author