Jennifer Lynn Barnes did not disappoint here, in a surprisingly tense mystery rolled up in a beautifully packaged family drama.
Sawyer doesn’t come from the best of backgrounds. She’s used to fending for herself as her mother tends to flit from one thing to another, and their circumstances are tight. So when Sawyer is greeted by a rather glamorous woman who says she’s her grandmother and who offers her half a million dollars if she’ll live with her for nine months, we just know there’s a catch to this opportunity.
Having arrived to a home that is the height of luxury, Sawyer has to prepare for a season as a Deb. She also has the opportunity to find out who her father is, but there’s also a rather odd situation going on concerning some of the girls she’s now expected to ally herself with. Secrets aplenty, and it’s down to Sawyer to work out the extent to which she gets involved.
The story is beyond our wildest dreams, and we switch from this narrative to the group of girls being kept in a jail cell hours before their final ball. Clever plotting keeps the story engaging, and switching between these timelines kept me highly entertained.