The Lives of Desperate Girls

One small, northern community. Two girls gone -- one missing, the other dead. A riveting coming-of-age debut young adult novel for fans of We Were Liars and All the Bright Places.

     Sixteen-year-old Helen Commanda is found dead just outside Thunder Creek, Ontario. Her murder goes unremarked, except for the fact that it may shed light on the earlier disappearance of Chloe Shaughnessy. Chloe is beautiful, rich and white. Helen is plain, and from the reservation. They had nothing in common except that they were teenage girls from an unforgiving small town. Only Chloe's best friend Jenny Parker knows exactly how unforgiving, but she's keeping some dangerous secrets of her own.

     Jenny begins looking for answers about Helen's life and death, trying to understand larger questions about her town and her best friend. But what can a teenage girl really accomplish where adults have failed? And how much is Jenny actually complicit in a conspiracy of silence?

MACKENZIE COMMON is twenty-five years old. Born in Newfoundland, she grew up in a succession of university towns (the family business, as she calls it) across Canada. She spent her adolescent years in Northern Ontario, which fundamentally shaped who she is today. She is currently working on her third degree, a Masters in Law at the University of Cambridge. This is her first novel.