MY SWEET GIRL

For fans of Ruth Ware, Jessica Knoll and Mary Kubica, My Sweet Girl is a fiendishly clever psychological thriller that asks: Can you ever really escape your past?

Ever since she was adopted as a teenager from an orphanage in Sri Lanka, Paloma has led a privileged life: the best schools, a generous allowance and parents so perfect that Paloma fears she'll never live up to them.

Now at thirty, Paloma has managed to disappoint her parents so thoroughly that their relationship will never recover. Unemployed with no friends and - having recently been cut off from her parents' funds - no money, Paloma decides to illegally sublet the second bedroom of her overpriced San Francisco apartment to a man named Arun. He's recently moved from India, and Paloma has to admit, it feels good to help someone trying to find his way in America. That is until Arun discovers Paloma's darkest secret, one that could jeopardize her own fragile place in this country.

Arun says he'll keep quiet for a price, but before Paloma can pay him off, she finds him face down in a pool of blood. Paloma flees the apartment and by the time the police arrive, there's no body to be found or signs of struggle - and no evidence that Arun ever even existed in the first place.

The police are quick to dismiss everything, but Paloma knows what she saw and fears that it is all somehow tangled up in her childhood in Sri Lanka - and the desperate actions she took to leave so many years ago. Did Paloma's secret die with Arun or is she now in greater danger than ever before?

Amanda Jayatissa grew up in Sri Lanka, attended college in Northern California, and lived in the UK before moving back to Sri Lanka, where she now works as a corporate trainer and co-owns a chain of cookie stores with her husband. In 2017, she self-published a sci-fi novel under the pseudonym Amanda Jay, and is currently hard at work on her next thriller.