Andrea Bartz, the bestselling author of the Reese’s Book Club pick WE WERE NEVER HERE, returns with her darkest, sexiest thriller yet. THE SPARE ROOM is about a quarantine pod gone very, very wrong.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last three years, you probably didn’t miss the pandemic or the very real, very stifling lockdowns and quarantines that announced its hold on the country. If you lived alone, it represented a new level of isolation you probably never encountered before. If you were partnered or living with family, you were unnaturally tethered to your circle, perhaps even feeling smothered.

"As always, [Bartz] brings to her writing a fierce emotional intelligence, one that is as eager to explore strange dynamics as it is to call out the red flags in them and subtly educate her readers along the way."

Kelly and her picture-perfect fiancé, Mike, are definitely the latter. With a recent move and job change already adding tension to their relationship, the pandemic seems like the final, terrible blow. When anxious, depressed and paranoid Kelly lets her fears take hold, Mike calls off their wedding, leaving her future uncertain. That is, until she reconnects with her childhood friend, Sabrina, once a mousy nerd and now a gorgeous, bestselling author of erotic romance novels. Unable, or at least unwilling, to talk to her friends about the sudden demise of her relationship, Kelly confides in Sabrina, who tells her that she and her husband, Nathan, have a spare room and invites her to come quarantine with them for a bit. Like anyone in a desperate situation, she takes a chance.

A far cry from her cramped Philadelphia apartment, 327 Tanglewood Drive sits proudly in Tanglewood Estates, a gated community full of stately manses and privileged, perfect people. Sabrina and Nathan fill their grand Georgian Revival mansion --- surrounded by century-old trees and a cemetery so gorgeous it could be a national park --- with art, a Beauty and the Beast-worthy library, and perfectly aged bottles of wine in every variety. They insist that Kelly should make herself at home. Although she is terrified to be there without the comfort of Mike, the trio quickly hit it off. The banter is breezy, the connections are swift, and…wait, are they hitting on her?

Perhaps it is the loss of the contentment that Kelly felt with Mike or the unsurprising but disappointing cooling of their own sex life, but every interaction with Sabrina, Nathan or both of them at once feels charged. Sabrina gazes at Kelly's lips a moment too long. Nathan presses up against her a bit too closely when she’s teaching him how to flip an egg. And then she discovers pictures of a gorgeous, lingerie-clad woman clearly in the middle of a tryst with Sabrina and Nathan…in the same room that she is now occupying. Desperate to learn more, Kelly senses her old paranoia resurfacing. But this time, instead of seeing the end of the world or searching for hints that her relationship is over, she’s on the hunt for something far sexier…and she finds it when she and Sabrina kiss after a night of wine and marijuana.

By morning, Kelly has joined the couple’s marriage, but whether it's for a handful of hours, a night or forever, she’s not quite sure. With lockdown still firmly in place, the mansion more than big enough for the three of them, and nothing calling her back to Philadelphia, it seems worth exploring, especially since she knows that Sabrina and Nathan have done this before. There’s just one catch: their last partner is missing, and the couple seems unwilling to discuss her or what really happened when she was last spotted near Tanglewood Estates.

As the relationship between the throuple heats up --- and boy, does it heat up --- Kelly finds herself caught not exactly in a love triangle but in a bizarre power dynamic. Sabrina and Nathan share a last name, a deed and a secret language, and she shares…their kitchen and their bed, but not their secrets. Kelly becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to their last lover. Was she pushed out of their twosome, or did something more sinister go down? And is it about to happen to her?

Andrea Bartz is known for her boundary-pushing feminist thrillers. In building this novel around polyamorous love and sex, she once again demonstrates that same keen intellect and bravery in confronting controversial or taboo themes. As always, she brings to her writing a fierce emotional intelligence, one that is as eager to explore strange dynamics as it is to call out the red flags in them and subtly educate her readers along the way.

Smart and seductive, THE SPARE ROOM is a fun, sexy summer read perfect for fans of Colleen Hoover’s VERITY or Robyn Harding’s THE SWAP.