All These Beautiful Strangers

By Marcia Divack

Billionaires, secret societies, posh prep schools, and beautiful people make the debut novel All These Beautiful Strangers by Elizabeth Klehfoth an engaging mystery. Written in alternating voices and different decades, this novel follows 17-year-old Charlotte (Charlie) Calloways desperate struggle to understand how and why her mother disappeared one warm summer night.  

When Charlie is invited to join The As, a secret society on the campus of Knollwood Augustus Preparatory School, she eagerly accepts and quickly discovers that this shadowy club may have been involved in her mothers disappearance as well as the destruction of anyone who doesnt live up to the club members expectations. As Charlies past and present begin to intertwine, she begins to doubt everything she believed about her parents, especially her father.  

While the bulk of the storyline is told from Charlies point of view, the reader is also privy to the thoughts of her parents, Grace and Alistair Calloway, and how their relationship formed, grew, and ultimately began to fail. Although this novel occasionally crosses into melodrama (think Pretty Little Liars) the honest depiction of Charlies relationships with her friends keeps it from going too far and derailing an otherwise intriguing storyline.  

All These Beautiful Strangers has the feel and appeal of a young adult novel, from the ages of the main protagonists to the high school setting. So while it is marketed as a book for adults, it would more likely appeal to older teens (16+) and adults who enjoy reading young-adult fiction.