Kate Russo’s Until Alison is a socially realistic, dual timeline coming-of-age mystery grounded in the pain of childhood conflicts.
Student journalist Rachel Nardelli has a secret. When her childhood best friend Alison Petrucci is killed, Rachel is terrified that the ugly parts of herself she’s tried so hard to bury will be unearthed.
Rachel left Alison behind back in middle school. Queen of the social faux pas, rich and unabashedly nerdy Alison had zero chill. She exuberantly stood out when Rachel just wanted to fit in.
Now a star reporter on Denman College’s newspaper, Rachel finds herself in charge of writing Alison’s story and too ashamed to admit she has no business being near it. Instead of coming clean to her colleagues and mentor at The Denman Weekly, Rachel pretends she hardly knew her deceased classmate. But the reality is that their pasts and present are closely, disastrously intertwined.
After enduring relentless social torture at their class-divided middle, Alison moved on to go to high school at an elite New England boarding school. Four years later, they both enrolled at Denman, where they mostly steered clear of each other. For Rachel, the distance is necessary: “I couldn’t help it, whenever she was around, it was like I didn’t know who I was anymore. I’d only ever known myself in relation to Alison.”
No longer an oddity at the elite liberal arts campus, pretty and quirky Alison acquired a like-minded tribe as earnest and privileged as she, while working-class, striving Rachel remained on the margins. Rachel does have her spot at the paper and is dating the wealthy and handsome Cam. But while her romance may look like a triumph, and it’s exciting to defy expectations with the preppy, outspoken, Republican big man on the liberal campus, the relationship is shallow. Even during her senior year of college, she is going through the motions, still haunted by guilt for the pain she caused her childhood friend.
Until Alison flashes between past and present as Rachel tries to own up to her truths and reconcile the petty crimes and misdemeanors that divided her and Alison, leading them to the roles they occupy now: reluctant witness and murder victim. Still, while the death of a young person is tragic, Rachel doesn’t dig very hard into the investigative assignment. That aspect of Until Alison is a little underwritten, but the big mystery here is not who killed Alison. It’s what Rachel should make of the social circumstances that hurt and divided her and her former friend—and how she can do better. That is the novel’s central and most intriguing puzzle to solve, and Russo teases out its contours with skill. Lovers of subtle psychological dramas about the interior lives of young women will be captivated by Until Alison’s honesty.
