Everything That Follows

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What to expect

For fans of Megan Abbott and Chris Bohjalian comes a novel of moral complexity about friends who must choose between self-preservation and doing the right thing in the wake of a fatal boating accident. Set in the moody off-season of Martha’s Vineyard, Everything That Follows is a plunge into the dark waters of secrets and flexible morals. The truth becomes whatever we say it is.

Around midnight, three friends take their partying from bar to boat on a misty fall evening. Just as the weather deteriorates, one of them suddenly and confusingly goes overboard. Is it an accident? The result of an unwanted advance? His body disappears quickly, silently, into the dark water. The circumstances are murky, but what is clear is that the other two need to notify the authorities. Minutes become hours become days as they hesitate, caught up in their guilt and hope that their friend has somehow made it safely to shore. As valuable time passes, they find themselves deep in a moral morass with huge implications as they struggle to move forward and live with their dark secret.

Critics Review

  • “A skillfully wrought tale of atonement in a frame of psychological suspense.”

    Booklist
  • “Taut with moral complexity and a subtly building tension, this is the kind of story that punishes you if you dare to put it down. ”

    Kim Cross, author of What Stands in a Storm
  • “Smart, taut, and seductive, Reilly’s second novel immediately catches you in its grip and doesn’t let you go.”

    Michelle Hoover, author of Bottomland
  • “Riveting and deeply insightful…[Reilly’s] characters are so organic, so painfully relatable, that their secrets, their dark desires, their moral failures somehow feel like our own.”

    John Ward, author of The Sovereign
  • “A novel that stays surprising from beginning to end and refuses to provide easy answers for the moral quandaries at its heart…Riveting.”

    Suzanne Berne, author of The Dogs of Littlefield

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