TUESDAY POTPOURRI: “THE AMERICAN GIRL”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Books & a Beat.

Today’s feature is a book I recently downloaded, and which appealed to me because of the synopsis (and cover).  The American Girl, by Kate Horsley, is a riveting psychological thriller about an American exchange student in France involved in a suspicious accident, and the journalist determined to break the story and uncover the dark secrets a small town is hiding.

 

 

 

Intro:  (Quinn Perkins – August 5, 2015)

Video Diary:  Session 6

{Quinn, a girl of seventeen, sits on the edge of a hospital bed wearing a white gown.  As she talks, her bare legs kick the frame of the bed and monitors beep softly in the background}.

You ever have one of those Magic 8 Balls as a kid?  Yeah, pretty retro, I know.  I remember asking mine if Adam Epstein was planning on taking me to senior prom.  It said, Don’t count on it, so I sat on my little pink bed with the daisy-pattern comforter and shook it again and again until I got the answer I wanted.

Um, my mind keeps circling.  Back to that Magic 8 Ball.  See, if I can remember those details—my room, the pattern on my comforter—then why can’t I remember all the other things that are so much more important?  The therapist who gave me this camera told me to keep a diary.  He gave me some exercises and helpful advice, too:  “the mind is a mysterious place” kind of thing.  But in the end, I guess, he found it just as frustrating trying to get inside my head as I do.  Everyone seems to.

{Quinn moves closer to the camera and stares into it}.

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Teaser:  Looking up, I find the scenery has shifted, the forest’s curtain parting to reveal darkness.  Two eyes stare at us, the great black eyes of a double cave.  Their appearance is so dramatic, so unexpected, it’s more like a scene out of Twin Peaks than real life. (42%).

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Synopsis:  On a quiet summer morning, seventeen-year-old American exchange student Quinn Perkins stumbles out of the woods near the small French town of St. Roch. Barefoot, bloodied, and unable to say what has happened to her, Quinn’s appearance creates quite a stir, especially since the Blavettes—the French family with whom she’s been staying—have mysteriously disappeared. Now the media, and everyone in the idyllic village, are wondering if the American girl had anything to do with her host family’s disappearance.

Though she is cynical about the media circus that suddenly forms around the girl, Boston journalist Molly Swift cannot deny she is also drawn to the mystery and travels to St. Roch. She is prepared to do anything to learn the truth, including lying so she can get close to Quinn. But when a shocking discovery turns the town against Quinn and she is arrested for the murders of the Blavette family, she finds an unlikely ally in Molly.

As a trial by media ensues, Molly must unravel the disturbing secrets of the town’s past in an effort to clear Quinn’s name, but even she is forced to admit that the American Girl makes a very compelling murder suspect. Is Quinn truly innocent and as much a victim as the Blavettes—or is she a cunning, diabolical killer intent on getting away with murder…?

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I am drawn to these kinds of stories, so I am definitely eager to keep reading.  What about you?

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