When we think of siblings, we imagine the elder guiding the younger, arriving at milestones first. For Grace and Nica, the roles were reversed: Nica, younger by one year, is the more socially mature and confident teenager who, in many regards, seemed much older than the quiet Grace. The sisters, the main characters in Lili Anolik's first novel under her own name, are different not just because of their personalities but because of the way they have been treated by their parents. Nica was the subject of their mother's increasingly voyeuristic photographic portraits, and Grace, rarely the subject of that art, was closer with her father. When Nica, just 16 years old, is murdered in the woods abutting the private high school where the girls attend and their parents work, Grace begins a troubling journey to understand her sister and find the killer.

"Anolik delivers a shadowy, often sensual look at rebellion, passion, secrets and first love.... an entertaining, sometimes gritty and often engrossing novel."

Because the suicide note of another student right after Nica's death offers a vague apology, the police and the the school community believe the case to be closed, but Grace is not convinced. Before she starts looking more closely at Nica's life and death, however, Grace spends months in a drug-induced haze from which she emerges pregnant with no memory of who the father could be. She decides to give herself to the end of her first trimester to find Nica's murderer and then have an abortion. Anolik takes Grace, and readers, on a fast-paced hunt for the killer as Grace mourns her sister, falls in love, learns several disturbing truths about her family, and wrestles with the symptoms and implications of her pregnancy.

Grace teams up with Damon, one of Nica's romantic entanglements, and together they try to work out who would've had the opportunity and motive to shoot Nica and let her bleed to death in the woods. Suspects are many, from ex-boyfriends to teachers and even family members. Grace and Damon, both grieving the loss of Nica, turn to each other for comfort, despite their feelings for Nica and the complicated event that may come to ruin them both. In the end, it is not really the murderer who is the most terrifying figure, but the person who was meant to protect and nurture Nica but was unable or unwilling to do so.

DARK ROOMS has an intriguing premise and some interesting twists and reveals, even if Anolik's delivery is a bit clumsy at times. The character motivations are not always clear or believable (for example, when overlooking or minimizing rape and murder in favor of the relationships that benefit from the oversights). Still, the characters are realistically complicated and flawed; for many readers, that may be enough to balance out their actions.

In DARK ROOMS, Anolik delivers a shadowy, often sensual look at rebellion, passion, secrets and first love. Even with some missteps, it is an entertaining, sometimes gritty and often engrossing novel.