AUGUST 2019 - AudioFile
Narrator Samuel West’s cultured British voice is tinged with nostalgic angst in his portrayal of Thomas in this translated French thriller. Thomas’s twenty-five-year reunion brings him to the Côte d'Azur for a chance to see friends and check on the skeleton in his closet, which is related to the disappearance of his unrequited teen love, Vinca, during his last year of school. Thomas’s best friends, Maxime and Manon, have been keeping secrets, as well. West's tone becomes increasingly panicked as Thomas follows the twists of Vinca's disappearance and a trail strewn with fresh bodies. It would give away too much to name the characters voiced by Cassie Layton, Clare Wille, and David Rintoul, but they all bring perspectives seething with emotion that is shared in revelatory bursts. S.T.C. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
05/27/2019
Intense nostalgia and simmering guilt drive this evocative mystery from Musso (Afterwards), a bestseller in France. In 1992, 19-year-old Vinca Rockwell, an American student at an elite boarding school in Anitibes, France, and her 27-year-old philosophy teacher, Alexis Clément, create a scandal when, as many believe, they run off together to Paris. In 2017, Thomas Degalais, a friend of Vinca who graduated from the same school 25 years earlier, knows this didn’t happen, because he killed Alexis, in the belief that the teacher abused Vinca, and walled him up in the freshly poured concrete of the new gym with the help of a friend’s father, a builder. Vinca was never seen again. At a reunion, the crime’s loose ends become an urgent matter for Thomas and two other friends of Vinca, Maxime Biancardini and Fanny Brahimi, who come to realize someone connected to those events is seeking revenge. Musso moves effortlessly between the violent past and the increasingly dangerous present as complicated relationships and tragic misunderstandings unfold. It’s all a tad melodramatic, but readers interested in the dark side of the good life on the Cote d’Azur will be satisfied. (July)
From the Publisher
"This immensely satisfying thriller about a prep school scandal and three friends' buried secrets had me turning the pages well into the night. The Reunion has everything a masterful thriller should: gut-wrenching suspense, a twisting story with blindsiding surprises, and a narrator with a mysterious past. It's no wonder that Guillaume Musso is one of France's most loved, bestselling authors."—Harlan Coben
"The French call it a coup de foudre: a strike of lightning. That's how The Reunion zapped me, electrified me. For almost a decade, Guillaume Musso has reigned supreme as France's most popular author, and with this, his American debut, he's instantly poised to join the ranks of Stieg Larsson and Jo Nesbo. The Reunion zigzags so nimbly — between past and present, from intrigue to terror, amid possible suspects and potential victims — that you're at very real risk of whiplash. Witty, elegant, and peopled with complex characters, it's one of the most sheerly suspenseful novels I've read in years — and among the most enjoyable, too."—A.J. Finn, bestselling author of The Woman in the Window
"A fast-paced thriller, set on the Cote d'Azur, packed with a glamorous missing girl, a dead body, and enough references to Twin Peaks and raves and Belle and Sebastian to tickle anybody who came of age in the 1990s...Musso is not just a popular author but the number one bestselling novelist in France. So you're bound to emerge more branché than those people you see on the beach reading home-grown potboilers."
—Lauren Mechling, Vanity Fair
"In Musso's masterful plotting, Thomas faces fresh dangers at every turn. The atmospheric finale—which unfolds at Villa Fitzgerald and along Smugglers Way, the coastal path near some of the most lavish properties on the Côte d'Azur—brings shocking revelations."
—Jane Ciabattari, BBC.com (The 10 Smartest Beach Reads of 2019)
"A multi-layered thriller that's fueled by urgency and drama. Guillaume Musso adds a menacing quality to the glamorous Côte d'Azur. With plot twists unleashed at a furious pace, The Reunion is a nightmare set in privileged utopia."
—Frank Brasile, Shelf Awareness
"Despite the ticking-clock premise, Musso takes time to set the atmosphere, with lush details that transport the reader to a locale that's at once glamorous and also laced with a deep, abiding sadness."
—CrimeReads
"A fine tale of suspense from France's best-selling author."
—Michele Leber, Booklist
"Long-buried secrets will give way to the truth in this tragic, riveting, French-Riviera-set story."
—Becky Toyne, Globe and Mail
"Intense nostalgia and simmering guilt drive this evocative mystery...Musso moves effortlessly between the violent past and the increasingly dangerous present as complicated relationships and tragic misunderstandings unfold...Readers interested in the dark side of the good life on the Cote d'Azur will be satisfied."
—Publishers Weekly
