Bright and Tender Dark

2019 bookends this murder mystery. In that year, student KC, a trans man, is the weary caretaker of a college dorm, picking up after his lazy peers and saving them from their drunken worst selves. The dorm he works in has a rumor-clad oddity: a young female student was killed there years ago, and the true-crime frenzy has made the building a magnet for professional and amateur sleuths. Their work sends us back to just before New Years Eve 1999, where we meet the victim, Karlie Richards. Karlie seems to have it all but, like everyone she meets, has dragged a weight of hopes, loves, and past mistakes to her new life in college. It’s the pre-#MeToo era as Karlie faces what turns out to be her final days, and readers will love to hate the professor who has a way too close relationship to his female students, and long to jump into the pages to warn the young women away. But there’s nothing we can do as Karlie’s doomed world comes to life and Pearson skillfully introduces several more characters who could have killed Karlie and more reasons why they would have done so. The divergent lives of the haves and have nots in college towns, and the experiences of evangelical students taking their first foray into a more secular world, are starkly painted in this dark debut novel by an author to watch.