The Collective by Alison Gaylin
Camille Gardner is a grieving and angry mother who, fives years after her daughter's death, is obsessed with the man she believes to be responsible.
Because Camille wants revenge.
Enter: the Collective.
A group of women who enact revenge on those who have taken their children.
But as Camille gets more involved in the group she must decide whether these women are the heroes or the villains.
And if she chooses wrong, will she ever get out alive?
About the author
Alison Gaylin is the award-winning author of Hide Your Eyes and its sequel, You Kill Me; the standalones Trashed, Heartless, What Remains Of Me and If I Die Tonight; and the Brenna Spector series: And She Was, Into the Dark, and Stay with Me. A graduate of Northwestern University and of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, she lives with her husband and daughter in Woodstock, New York.
As part of the blog tour it’s my pleasure to be able to share an extract with you!
The ceremony starts in twenty minutes. I’m climbing out of the subway tunnel, a thousand unwanted smells in my hair. I’m not used to being around this many people— the stink of them, the heat, the noise. The noise especially. I just shared a subway car with a group of high school girls, and their laughter still swirls in my ears. I probably should have driven, but it’s been hard for me to drive long distances since Emily’s death. My thoughts start spinning along with the wheels, memories of road trips, of carpools and radio singalongs and petty arguments, and before I know it, I’m aiming straight for the divider.
The venue is just three blocks away. I walk slowly, slower than everyone around me, trying to catch my breath, to still my thoughts, to think of nothing but the sidewalk and the cold night air and where I need to be.
From half a block away, I recognize the Brayburn Club. I know it from the photo I found online. It’s located in a Gramercy Park brownstone with leaded windows and wide, majestic steps. It’s a week past New Year’s, but the BrayburnClub is still decorated for the holiday season, a lush wreath filling the front door, icicle lights dripping from the window- sills like fresh beads of sweat.
I pass a group of young women smoking last-minute cigarettes—friends of his, maybe?—and I think back to the time I caught Emily smoking weed with her friend Fiona. She must have been fourteen, always a little old for her years and bored of our small Hudson Valley town. I got so angry with her. Grounded her for two months. Her dad thought it excessive. We smoked pot when we were that age, Matt said, missing the point. Yes, we smoked pot when we were fourteen, but Emily wasn’t us. She was better than us.
I won’t do it again, Mom. I promise. Her voice in my head is as clear and real as the shrieking laughter of the girls on the train. I want to lose myself in it and never come back.
It isn’t until I’m at the top of the stairs, after I’ve handed the boy at the door my invitation and I’m in line for the coat check, that Emily’s voice quiets and I remember where I am and why I’m here.
“Anything else, ma’am?” says the coat check girl. She has a freshly scrubbed look and shiny dark hair and she’s wearing the Brayburn College colours—crimson jacket, gold blouse. “Anything else?” She says it like she’s prompting me from a script.
“No. Nothing else. Thank you.”
The girl’s nose scrunches up. She looks at me funny, and I wonder if she can sense what I’ve been up to. Who I am.
