January 1, 2018
The spirit of Patricia Highsmith’s sociopathic social climber Tom Ripley is alive in Mangan’s transportive debut. Alice Shipley and Lucy Mason met as freshman at Bennington in the early 1950s and became the best of friends. Now, after a year apart, they meet again in 1956 in Tangier, where Alice and her new husband, John McAllister, have moved for his job. Alice doesn’t especially enjoy living in Tangier, which is too foreign for her liking. Lucy, meanwhile, revels in the raffish individuals found in the souk. A suspected dalliance by John paves the way for Lucy to reassert her position with the emotionally fragile and easy-to-manipulate Alice. At the same time, the story flashes back to the girls’ passionate friendship at Bennington, where they were inseparable until Tom, a drama student from Williams, came between them. A tragedy ultimately broke their friendship, and there is every indication that another accident of some kind will occur in Tangier; the twisted history of this relationship seems fated to repeat itself. Although some of the plot developments are easy to predict, the novel is narrated persuasively in alternating chapters by Alice and Lucy, and Mangan’s portrayal of Tangier is electric. This sharp novel reads like Single White Female rewritten as a collaboration between Paul Bowles and Mary McCarthy.

May 28, 2018
The audio edition of Mangan’s debut novel, set in 1956 Morocco, expertly brings to life the strange and sinister relationship of two young women. Reader Kreinik enacts the guarded, upper-class Briton Alice Shipley, and Mallon performs as working class American Lucy Mason. Told by each in alternating chapters, the story begins in Tangier, where Alice has been living for a year with her husband, when Lucy unexpectedly arrives on her doorstep. Flashbacks explain that the two met several years before while roommates at Bennington College. Something severed their close friendship and left Alice in a fragile mental state from which she has never quite recovered. What happened back then and what brought Lucy to Tangier are the questions that drive Mangan’s taut thriller. The voice actors give subtle interpretations of the two women at the heart of the book, a fearful Alice closing herself off from the exotic city while Lucy eagerly embraces it. With Kreinik and Mallon capturing its characters as well as the arid, intriguing atmosphere of Tangier, the audiobook emerges as a murderous entertainment influenced by Patricia Highsmith and Alfred Hitchcock. An Ecco hardcover.

December 1, 2017

Obsession intersects two love triangles in this tale of devotion gone wrong. Twisted passion, perceived betrayal, and a fight for survival are written into the exotic, colorful, and dangerous backdrop of 1950s Tangier, Morocco. Alice Shipley and Lucy Mason are introverted college roommates who quickly become best friends. But when Alice finds romance with Tom, odd things happen, ending with a car accident that tears their lives apart. Trying to forget Lucy and their tainted past, Alice marries a man she hardly knows and moves to Tangier--a place that holds the promise of adventure laced with the thrill of danger but that proves too threatening for Alice. Amid her misery in Tangier, Alice is shocked to find Lucy on her doorstep, an unwanted visitor from the past. When Lucy discovers that Alice's marriage is far from happy, she decides to rescue the woman she'd loved in college, once again claiming her as her own. In a relationship characterized by intense loyalty and ardent passion, the price of betrayal and the sacrifice for survival become steep. VERDICT Readers captivated by the flavor of international romance and intrigue, as in Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, will enjoy the distorted psychological twists and turns in this fascinating off-center tale. [See Prepub Alert, 9/25/17.]--K.L. Romo, Duncanville, TX

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 15, 2018
In 1956, a pair of college roommates meets again in Tangier, with terrifying results."At first, I had told myself that Tangier wouldn't be so terrible," says Alice Shipley, a young wife dragged there by her unpleasant husband, John McAllister, who has married her for her money. He vanishes every day into the city, which he adores, while Alice is afraid to go out at all, having once gotten lost in the flea market. Then Lucy Mason, her one-time best friend and roommate at Bennington College, shows up unannounced on her doorstep. "I had never, not once in the many moments that had occurred between the Green Mountains of Vermont and the dusty alleyways of Morocco, expected to see her again." Alice and Lucy did not part on good terms; there are repeated references to a horrible accident which will remain mysterious for some time. What is clear is that Lucy is romantically obsessed with Alice and that Alice is afraid of her. In chapters that alternate between the two women's points of view, the past and the present unfold. The two young women bonded quickly at Bennington: though Alice is a wealthy, delicate Brit and Lucy a rough-edged local on scholarship, both are orphans. Or at least Lucy says she is--from the start, there are inconsistencies in her story that put Alice in doubt. And while Alice is so frightened of Tangier that she can't leave the house, Lucy feels right at home: she finds the maze of souks electrifying, and she quickly learns to enjoy the local custom of drinking scalding hot mint tea in the heat. She makes a friend, a shady local named Joseph, and immediately begins lying to him, introducing herself as Alice Shipley. Something evil this way comes, for sure. Mangan's debut pays homage to The Talented Mr. Ripley and to the work of Daphne du Maurier and Shirley Jackson.A vivid setting and a devious, deadly plot, though the first is a bit overdone and the second contains a few head-scratchers, including the evil-lesbian trope. Film rights have already been sold; it will make a good movie.

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Starred review from January 1, 2018
Like a chameleon, noir adapts to its landscape and climate, finding in either sun or rain the climatological ingredients necessary to generate a mood of oppression, foreboding, and inevitability. So it is in Mangan's hypnotic debut, set in 1950s Tangier, where a deadly, Hitchcockian pas de deux plays out under an unrelenting, Camus-like African sun. Alice, a fragile Englishwoman, has landed in Tangier after a sudden marriage to one of those British gentlemen whose pedigree masks his idler essence. The marriage is a way of escaping the scandal that caused Alice's breakdown and forced her to leave college in Vermont. When Lucy, Alice's college roommate, turns up at Alice's door in Tangier, the dance begins, with Mangan switching the narration between Alice and Lucy, as we gradually learn what happened in Vermont and begin to get a feel for the psychological dynamics between the two women. The echoes of Patricia Highsmith reverberate almost too loudly here. Yes, Mr. Ripley has become a femme fatale, but Mangan's take on that familiar theme never seems reductive, nor mere homage. That's partially because of the electrical energy that crackles between Alice and Lucy, but it's also related to Mangan's ability to turn the mood and the setting of the story into a kind of composite force field that sucks the reader in almost instantly. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Scarlett Johansson will play Alice in a George Clooney-produced film that is already generating buzz, months before the book is even published.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)