El Dorado Drive

"Megan Abbott’s books trap readers inside highly specific bubbles: wannabe-Olympian gymnastics, a cutthroat science lab, a honeymoon-turned-imprisonment. Her latest bubble is more literal: suburban Detroit during the 2008 financial crisis. Down-on-her-luck Harper Bishop joins sisters Pam and Debra on the Wheel – neighborhood women pooling thousands in cash to lift up one member in need. But if it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is: The sisterhood is as false as the money cakes; one woman’s windfall is another’s murder motive. Abbott compellingly captures the endless cycles of feast or famine through these sisters whose family already lost everything with Detroit’s auto industry collapse, yet will gamble it all away again to scramble atop the Wheel."