While I enjoyed reading Kate White’s best-selling career bible, Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead…but Gutsy Girls Do, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the high-profile editor of Cosmopolitan also has a passion for writing fiction.

The sixth of seven novels, The Sixes is a stand-alone psychological thriller. From the first page onward, I was engrossed in the story and had trouble putting the book down, disrupting my sleep patterns for several nights.

Celebrity writer Phoebe Hall is hiding in small town Pennsylvania. After her long-time boyfriend abruptly ends their relationship and she is accusing of plagiarism, her best friend and college president Glenda Johns offers her a teaching position.

Phoebe was hoping to keep her head down while she planned her next book. Instead, Glenda asks her to investigate the Sixes, a secret society on campus. This crop of mean girls has taken feminism to a dangerous extreme and may even be responsible for several grisly murders on campus.

As Phoebe becomes a target of their hateful pranks, she starts reliving some of the horror from her own boarding school years. At one point, she wonders if any of those tormenters have followed her to Pennsylvania. She also suspects her love interest, a psychology professor who is guarding his own secrets.

So many red herrings, twists and turns in this novel.  I was kept guessing right until the end.

An excellent read!