Her Beautiful Life

A journalist discovers cracks in the facade of a tradwife influencer in Labuskes’s satisfying latest (after It Ends with Her). Feeling stalled her in job at Profile magazine, Holland Tate eagerly embraces her latest assignment: an interview with influencer Catriona Bouchard, who also happens to be her former roommate from Savannah, Ga. The two have lost touch in the 11 years since they lived together, but Holland proposes they catch up at the Vermont orchard where Cat lives with her French financier husband and six perfect children. When Holland arrives, she learns that Cat rarely leaves her family’s “compound,” where she and her children pass the time baking pies from fruit grown in the orchard. Then online scuttlebutt and worrying innuendo from Cat’s stepson lead Holland to suspect there’s a dark side to the Bouchards’ sparkling lives. When a body turns up at the compound, Holland and the police walk a winding path to uncover the culprit. Labuskes’s critique of social media takes aim at soft targets, but she pulls off some truly surprising and unsettling twists along the way. Psychological thriller fans will get exactly what they came for. Agent: Abby Saul, Lark Group. (Dec.)