All That Was by Karen Rivers (review)

Piper and Sloane have been inseparable, exclusive, nearly identical friends since they were little girls. Now Sloane is seventeen, and Piper has just been murdered. Flashbacks to "Before" track the leadup to the crime through Sloane's narration, as Piper starts dating Soup, the boy Sloane has been crushing on, and Sloane begins to struggle with the power imbalance in the friendship. Piper's solution, to fix Sloane up with a creepy older guy, only emphasizes Piper's puppetry—but is there another layer of manipulation there that relates to her death? This is at its best when it's most gothic, a sort of contemporary Rebecca where two Mrs. de Winters are alive and friends (and they're each a little Mrs. Danvers); the rugged coastal setting, complete with dramatic island destination, adds atmosphere. Rather than ramping up to a gothic crescendo, however, the book descends back into an uninspiring reality where Piper's less tantalizing than relentlessly unpleasant, and where the peripheral character of the killer, the focus on Sloane's emotional recovery, and the unrewarding subplot about Soup's biological father take attention from the girls' fascinatingly toxic friendship. Readers will be better served by Adele Griffin's various chronicles of moneyed girls' difficult dynamics, but they may still enjoy the overwound drama here. DS