BOOK REVIEW: Tell Me Everything by Cambria Brockman @cambriabrockman @randomhouse #bookreview #tellmeeverything

An elite New England college, a group of friends that form fast and close, a shocking murder that tears them apart…. I knew going in the Tell Me Everything by Cambria Brockman was my kind of book. I love books that take place on college campuses. They are little microcosm of society—everything always seemed heightened because it is more contained. This was no exception!

About the Book

Malin is introverted, shy, beautiful, and intelligent. She’s always felt that her looks draw attention that she’d prefer not to attract. She’d rather read, study, or be by herself. But when she heads to college, she knows she needs to try to make friends, and so that’s what she does.

In her first weeks at Hawthorne College, Malin is swept up into a tight-knit circle that will stick together through all four years. There’s Gemma, an insecure theater major from London; John, a tall, handsome, and wealthy New Englander; Max, John’s cousin and a shy pre-med major; Khaled, a wise-cracking prince from Abu Dhabi; and Ruby, a beautiful art history major. But Malin isn’t quite like the rest of her friends. She’s an expert at hiding her troubling past. She acts as if she is concerned with the preoccupations of those around her—boys, partying—all while using her extraordinary insight to detect their deepest vulnerabilities and weaknesses.

By Senior Day, on the cusp of graduation, Malin’s secrets—and those of her friends—are revealed. While she scrambles to maintain her artfully curated image, her missteps set in motion a devastating chain of events that ends in a murder. And as their fragile relationships hang in the balance and close alliances start shifting, Malin will test the limits of what she’s capable of to stop the truth from coming out.

Reflection

What a book! The suspense in this one creeps up. Despite knowing upfront that Senior Day will end in a murder, the story was so captivating that I almost forgot about the murder for the first half. The story is told in alternating timelines between freshman year as Malin forms friendships with the group of six, Senior Day where the twisted path these friendships have taken unfold through quick stories leading up to the murder, and stories from Malin’s past that cover secrets she has worked to keep hidden.

This narrative structure was so perfectly executed, as the bits of stories we learned about each character slowly became connected, leading to a shocking ending that truly took me by surprise. Sometimes I think that telling a story out of sequence can be jarring, but that didn’t happen here. Instead, the characters became more rounded as the book progressed.

Malin is an incredible and unique character. Her beauty is in stark contrast to who she is—someone who is more comfortable in the shadows letting others shine. When Malin starts college, she pushes herself to try to make friends. In the past, she has always preferred being alone, a fact that made her parents worry about her. With a fresh start, Malin is determined to be normal and have people to rely on.

And despite Malin’s reserved nature and distance from others, she does develop friendships. Seeing the characters through Malin’s eyes was interesting, because Malin is a person who thinks deeply about each interaction. She reads others and tries to understand what they want, what they are hiding, and why they are doing things. But Malin herself never seems fully reliable. Through her monologue, we come to understand that Malin has some secrets in her past that she hopes the others won’t learn. Malin doesn’t even share them with us right away.

And the ending! I have to be careful here because I don’t want to give any hints. I saw another reviewer describe the ending as “a twist so quiet you never saw it coming” and I think that is the perfect way to describe it. A brilliant debut novel! I will be looking for whatever Cambria Brockman does next!

About the Author

Cambria Brockman grew up in Houston, London, and Scotland, and attended Holderness School in New Hampshire. She graduated from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, with a degree in English literature. She owns an award-winning wedding and portrait photography company, Cambria Grace, along with its popular Instagram account. Brockman lives in Boston with her husband, son, and dog. Tell Me Everything is her first novel.