MEGAN ABBOTT, YOU GUYS.

This is less a review than a fan letter. And less a fan letter than the text equivalent of an animated gif of Kermit waving his arms. This one:

Because seriously, she is so good. I sought her out finally after Sarah Weinman, in the introduction of Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, mentioned her in the same breath as Tana French and Gillian Flynn. Indeed, they form a transatlantic trifecta of badass crime fiction queens (and in my headcanon they are also a team of sensibly dressed superheroines).

The two novels I read recently, Dare Me and Bury Me Deep, are set 70 years apart--the former, among the loyalties and betrayals of a high school cheerleading squad, torn between their ruthless ex-captain and their charismatic new coach; the latter, in 1930s Phoenix, in a fictionalized account of a then-notorious murder case. Both focus on the lives of women, where men serve largely as complicating factors, and female friendships are fierce and toxic by turns.

And the prose, my God. I want to just stuff her sentences in my mouth, every one of 'em. Here's an example I've been quoting nonstop, from Dare Me:

[He] makes us dizzy, that mix of hard and soft, the riven-granite profile blurred by the most delicate of mouths, the creasy warmth around his eyes—eyes that seem to catch far-off things blinking in the fluorescent lights. He seems to see things we can’t, and to be thinking about them with great care.

(Admission: this description made me picture the character as looking just like Dean Winchester. I think about Dean Winchester a lot, OK?!? LAY OFF I CAN QUIT ANYTIME)