Sara Shepard - Reputation

Praise for

REPUTATION

What an addictive, juicy novel, with a whip-cracking plot full of twists and turns. Reputation is packed to bursting with all of the best elements of commercial fiction. Read this one!

Sarah Pekkanen, #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of An Anoymous Girl

Sara Shepard reaches delicious, vicious heights with Reputation. I felt like I was sucked into a video game, slipping into different skins in every chapter. Its the love child of Dead to Me and Scream, a creepy tale about modern technology and good old-fashioned human flaws. Were so lucky that Shepard is out there watching the way we live, seeing the best in us, and, oh yes, the cringe-inducing, often laugh-out-loud worst as well.

Caroline Kepnes, author of You, Hidden Bodies, and Providence

A modern murder-mystery that exposes our deepest fears about how vulnerable we are to the parts of ourselves we hide online. As the secrets pile up, Shepard writes her calculating antiheroines with sharp clarity, daring the reader to keep pace alongside her. I, for one, was breathless.

Chandler Baker, New York Times bestselling author of Whisper Network

Deliciously diabolical. Shepard spares no one in this breakneck thriller as dark secrets and shocking scandals lead to murder.

Liv Constantine, international bestselling author of The Last Mrs. Parrish and The Last Time I Saw You

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Copyright 2019 by Sara Shepard

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGI NG-IN-PUBLICATION DA TA

Names: Shepard, Sara, 1977 author.

Title: Reputation: a novel / Sara Shepard.

Description: New York, New York: Dutton, [2020]

Identifiers: LCCN 2019014647 (print) | LCCN 2019015499 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524742911 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524742904 (tr pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: MurderInvestigationFiction.

Classification: LCC PS3619.H4543 (ebook) | LCC PS3619.H4543 R47 2020 (print) | DDC 813/.6dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019014647

Hudson Exclusive Edition ISBN: 9780593182567

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Version_1

To K + H

LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO

Maybe you got it at birth. Maybe you gained it through hard work. Perhaps you have yours because youre charitable, or ambitious, or an asshole. Its your reputation. Everyones got one. And if you think reputations dont matter, youre wrong.

Good reputations lift velvet ropes. They get you approved for loans; theyre your ticket to prestigious universities. Good reputations land jobs, find you a spouse, earn you the right friends.

But have a bad reputationwell. Here come the whispers. Here come the slammed doors. Just try to shake off your bad name: Ten years later, a girl will still be known as the sophomore who had the affair with her track coach. Twenty years later, the only thing neighbors know about the man down the street is that he beat his wife; or that the woman in the grocery store is a frigid spinster; or that the lady on the library steps had something awful happen and she went crazy.

So it makes sense to preserve a good name, sure. But how far would you go to preserve your reputationespecially when you fear youre about to be exposed? Would you work on a good cover story? Would you lie? Would you kill?

Youre shaking your head: Id never do thatIm a good person. But until youre in the thick of it, you have no idea what youre capable of. If something needs to stay hidden, you just might do whatever it takes.

PART

1

1

KIT

MONDAY, APRIL 24, 2017

Ive already had two strong martinis before hitting the rooftop bar at the Hotel Monaco in Old City, Philadelphia, which isnt like me at all. But my foundations clients, the very reason Im on this business trip? They bailed on me at the last minute. Decided to go to a horse show instead. I tried to insinuate myself into their outingnot that I wanted to go to a horse showbut either they didnt get my hint or they didnt want my company.

I take my job very seriously. I raise money for Aldrich University, one of the best private colleges in the whole United Statesits up there with the Harvards and Stanfords of the world, and actually tougher to get into. Ever since my first husband passed away, Ive been the universitys leading ensnarer of Big Fish donors. I seek out alumnae far and wide, vetting their newly minted positions as heads of hospitals or as CEOs, tracking the science prizes theyve recently won, making it my business to know if the books theyve written have hit the New York Times Best Sellers list. And then I pounce, stroking their egos, showering them with praise, reminding them of the prestigious academic roots from which they hail and that the right thing to do, when enjoying their kind of wealth and success, is to give back. I get a rush when I receive a huge check from a new donorits my version of doing drugs. So when I find out that Dr. and Mrs. Robert Hawser of Devon, Pennsylvania, will be watching dressage instead of coming out with Kit Manning-Strasser of Aldrich University Charitable Giving for some wining and dining, I take it pretty damn hard.

Have I done something wrong? Im not even the one who groomed these peopleit was Lynn Godfrey, a pushy, grating, competitive woman from my department. I consider calling her and chewing her out, but I dont chew people out. I am graceful and humble and know when to back off. Next week, I will reach out to the Hawsers again. I will be kind and forgiving and gracious. We will start over.