Synopsis
"You're not going to murder me in the night, are you?" Emily asks. I laugh. I tell her she's so funny. Obviously, I'm not going to murder her in the night. That should go without saying. I need my laptop back first. That's the whole point of making friends with Emily Harper, author of the surprise bestseller Diary of an Octopus. So I could get inside her apartment and take back what's mine. Emily doesn't know who I really am. She thinks I'm her biggest fan, her new best friend who happens to need a place to stay for a few days. She doesn't realize the laptop she found-and took-from a busy airport almost two years ago, was mine. I didn't care about the laptop, just what was on it. My diary. The one I kept many years ago as a troubled thirteen-year-old girl with a vivid imagination and a flair for the dramatic. The diary Emily Harper has now published as her own coming-of-age novel. She thinks it's a story about a schoolgirl's crush on her teacher, but she's wrong. And that's why I need to find my laptop and disappear. Because it won't be long before someone out there recognizes the story. And when they do, they'll know what I did all those years ago. And what I'm capable of., I lie a lot. Big lies, little lies, whatever. All I'm doing is applying an Instagram filter to my life. Everybody does it. I do it because there's nothing remotely interesting about me. Unless you count the fact that I'm a psychopath. To be fair, I haven't killed anyone in almost ten years, so I prefer to think of myself as a recovering psychopath. Rose Dunmore may not have killed anyone lately, but that could be about to change. Because as she walks past a bookstore on a sunny afternoon, something about the book in the window makes her stop. It's the familiar title: Diary of an Octopus . And it may not be her name on the cover, but when she rushes inside and opens it to the first page, she knows. It's her old teenage diary. It's also her worst nightmare come true. Rose knows exactly how the person claiming to be the author of this surprise bestseller - a social media influencer named Emily Harper - came to have Rose's diary in her possession. But Rose doesn't care about that. She just wants it back. Because while some details didn't make it in Emily Harper's version, it won't be long before someone out there recognizes the story. And when they do, they'll know what Rose did all these years ago. Rose will do whatever it takes to get her diary back. A little stalking, a lot of lying, and if necessary... Well. Whatever it takes. Let's just leave it at that.