Where the Truth Lies (review)

Stonybrook Academy is all that Emily knows—her father has been headmaster at the posh boarding school in Connecticut as long as she can remember, and she loves dorm life in the quad with her friends. Her junior year marks a change, however, as she becomes smitten with bad boy Del, despite—or perhaps because of—her father's uncharacteristic warning about him. Her carelessness with Del leads to secret pregnancy and the birth of a baby who's immediately given up for adoption, and then Emily discovers that her beloved, seemingly staid parents have kept some deeply important secrets from her as well, secrets that reveal the truth about her lifelong night terrors and her own origins. Warman, author of the excellent Breathless (BCCB 11/09), returns here to the boarding-school milieu she continues to depict with finesse and tantalizing detail (though it's set at a different school, the book has some crossover connection to Breathless through one character); the hothouse intensity and ramped-up intimacy of life in Emily's dorm is yearningly credible. The book skillfully brings that same intensity to Emily's romance with Del, a relationship colored by disturbing undertones of control and projection. There's a soap-operatic generosity with dramatic plot elements and backstory here, especially in the multiple layers of family secrets that Emily must eventually penetrate, but Warman's fluid, sensitive writing flows past the contrivances; it's certainly plausible that Emily's own experiences end up informing her ultimate reaction to the revelations about her past. This is a smart, sensitive melodrama for readers who relished the hothouse world of Breathless.