Friend Request

At the start of British author Marshall’s suspenseful if heavy-handed first novel, recently divorced London single mom Louise Williams receives a startling friend request from Maria Weston, a high school classmate who disappeared on the night of their graduation party more than 25 years earlier, and was presumed drowned. Unfortunately, the emotionally vulnerable interior decorator can’t simply ignore Maria’s Facebook overture—which is followed by an invitation to a class reunion in their hometown of Sharne Bay, Norfolk, and a series of increasingly alarming messages—because of guilt over the part she believes she played in the tragedy, and fear that someone is finally about to make her pay. Raising the stakes is Henry, her young son with ex Sam Parker, another high school classmate (and about the only person who shares her guilty secrets). Marshall leaps skillfully back and forth between past and present, but her inexperience shows in hamfisted manipulation of characters to serve the plot, as well as transparent attempts at misdirection. Agent: Felicity Blunt, Curtis Brown (U.K.). (Sept.)