'Luckiest Girl Alive' is perfect for your last summer read

Revealing debut

Jessica Knoll's debut novel, Luckiest Girl Alive, made waves when the Shipley School grad revealed she had based some of the book on her high school gang rape. While Knoll made it clear, in a piece for she wrote for Lena Dunham's Lenny Letter newsletter, that Luckiest Girl Alive was not a memoir, her life experiences inspired what happens in her best-seller. "To all the TifAni FaNellis of the world," she wrote, referring to her main character, "I know."

Hopefully, that story didn't detract from how good the book actually is. This dark and twisty mystery is perfect for closing out your summer- reading season.

Even Reese Witherspoon, who helped shepherd other successful book adaptations like Gone Girl and Wild to the big screen, agrees. She optioned the book for a screenplay that Knoll penned.

Luckiest Girl Alive follows TifAni, called Ani, a 28-year-old who seems to have it all - killer wardrobe, cool job, hot fiancé - but who is stunted by the trauma she experienced at her upper-crust private school in the Philadelphia suburbs.

The way the book frames time makes its shocks all the more powerful.

Pick it up before that last trip down the Shore.

- Molly Eichel

Luckiest Girl Alive, Simon & Schuster, 368 pp., $15.99.