"The Wonder State is so much dark, delicious fun! . . . I can’t recommend The Wonder State enough."
—Colleen Mondor, Locus Magazine
"A novel as unexpected as it is engaging . . . hard to put down."
—Gail Pennington, St. Louis Post Dispatch
"The Wonder State in many ways cuts deeper than its predecessor[s] . . . the [book's] real horror is that your friends were never really who you thought they were, and that, while betrayal may be exacerbated by adulthood, its seeds are sown almost as soon as you find someone to betray."
—Noah Berlatsky, Observer
"Richly imagined and vividly rendered . . . Magical, moving, and gripping, this is a special book indeed."
—Kristine Huntley, Booklist (starred review)
"The latest standalone thriller from [Sara Flannery] Murphy gets its hooks into readers from the opening chapter and doesn’t let go . . . With echoes of I Know What You Did Last Summer, this gives a familiar trope new life."
—Publishers Weekly
"Across two timelines, a band of friends explores the secrets of an Arkansas hot springs town... influences of Stephen King, Donna Tartt, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are clear here."
—Kirkus
"While Flannery Murphy was influenced by the Nancy Drew series and The Chronicles of Narnia, The Wonder State is darker than both. And yet the novel’s charm is strongest in its homage to the Ozarks, and to the nostalgia of being a teen at the turn of the millennium."
—Sari Fordham, Electric Lit
“The Wonder State is a startling feat of—and feast for—the imagination, filled with intoxicating mysteries, devastating secrets, and prose as beautiful and magical as the story itself. Its setting is both deeply familiar and uniquely fantastical, and it’s the atmospheric page-turner of my dreams.”
—Megan Collins, author of The Family Plot
“Reading this novel was like finding a haunted passageway through the fiercest heart of the Ozarks. It’s full of creepy houses, broken promises, and the kind of thorny secrets that bind a small town for generations. Provocative, melodic, and surprising, The Wonder State led me into its sparkling dark and still hasn’t let me go.”
—Amy Jo Burns, author of Shiner
“Sara Flannery Murphy’s The Wonder State is many things: a bittersweet coming-of-age tale, an engrossing portrait of life in the small-town Ozarks, and a brilliant allegory in which childhood longings for permanence and stability take a concrete form. It reminds me of some of the books I’ve loved the longest, including the Chronicles of Narnia and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, and yet it offers its own unique form of magic. Above all, it speaks to our secret yearnings for a place where the past might be waiting for us to step into it again.”
—Polly Stewart, author of The Good Ones
“The Wonder State is a slippery, twisty tale about friendship, power, and belonging. Sara Flannery Murphy’s worlds are never quite what they seem—this one in particular is electrifying and scary and utterly thrilling.”
—Anton DiSclafani, author of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls
05/29/2023
The latest standalone thriller from Murphy (Girl One) gets its hooks into readers from the opening chapter and doesn’t let go. In 2015, 30-something Brandi Addams is preparing to leave her hometown of Eternal Springs, Ark., for a fresh start. On the way out of town, she stops at an abandoned house, where she finds a mysterious antique key she’s been seeking, and then promptly disappears. Two weeks later, with Brandi’s whereabouts still unknown, the townspeople hold a candlelight vigil in hopes of bringing her home, an event that coincides with the arrival in Eternal Springs of several of Brandi’s old friends, who have each received identical, two-word letters from Brandi, stating simply, “You promised.” Their reunion turns into an amateur investigation as they seek the truth about Brandi’s fate, which may be related to an incident that occurred in 1999, when the group was in high school together. Through alternating timelines, the group’s dark past comes into focus and sheds light on their present, rarely in ways most readers would expect. Murphy delays answers effectively, and makes the reveal about why the friends felt bound to respond to Brandi’s message worth the wait. With echoes of I Know What You Did Last Summer, this gives a familiar trope new life. Agent: Alice Whitwham, Cheney Agency. (July)
2023-05-09
Across two timelines, a band of friends explores the secrets of an Arkansas hot springs town.
In a town in the Ozarks, there are eight magic houses, each with its own abilities. One house forces visitors to tell the truth, another can slow down time for those inside it, and a third grants powerful luck. The friends spend their senior year of high school hunting for the houses; the eighth and most mysterious they call the Portal House, and they believe it can transport them to the alternate dimension that gives the houses their powers. But their quest ends in tragedy, and most of the group leaves town, presumably for good. Fifteen years later, in 2015, they’re drawn back when one of them—Brandi—disappears. While the rest of the friends found success elsewhere, Brandi stayed in Arkansas, cleaning houses and struggling with an addiction to prescription pills. The book focuses on Jay, a painter constricted by guilt over leaving Brandi, her one-time best friend, behind. There’s also Iggy, a popular quarterback who was once Jay’s lover; Charlie, bookish and wistful; and Max and Hilma, wealthy twins who are outsiders to the town. Finding Brandi is mandatory: The group is bound by an oath they took, given power by one of the houses. The influences of Stephen King, Donna Tartt, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are clear here. Aside from the fantastical houses, which are neither haunted nor quite benevolent, the world of the novel is conventional, and Jay is the only character with depth. At the end, the person who turns out to be the antagonist discusses their actions and motives and then asks: “Is this like at the end of some cheesy movie, where the villain just explains everything to you?” Jay isn’t sure if it’s just a joke, and neither is the reader.
A thriller that doesn’t elevate its fascinating core premise.
