"Girl Gone Mad"

Avery Bishop is the pseudonym for a USA Today bestselling author of over a dozen novels.

Bishop applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, Girl Gone Mad, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Girl Gone Mad finds the reader smack dab in the middle of chapter 9. This chapter takes place at Olivia Campbell's parents' house right after Olivia's funeral. It's an informal reception, and we find the novel's protagonist and narrator, Emily, there along with Courtney, one of Emily and Olivia's friends from middle school. On page 69, Olivia's sister, Karen, comes to thank Emily and Courtney for coming. Courtney asks about a man who showed up during the funeral — who practically barged in and created quite a scene — and it's then that Karen shares that Olivia took her own life and that everyone blames the man, who was Olivia's fiancé.

Now, for some background on Girl Gone Mad, the novel deals with mean girl culture and how a set of popular girls in middle school bullied the new girl to her breaking point. Fourteen years pass and all the girls have gone their separate ways. Emily in particular holds guilt over what happened. At the beginning of the novel, Emily receives word that Olivia has died. She goes back and forth on whether or not she should attend the funeral. In the end, she goes along with Courtney, and on page 69 is where the real mystery starts: we learn that Olivia didn't just die, but that she killed herself, and that her fiancé had some kind of involvement. This raises even more questions for Emily and Courtney, and what forces them to start looking into what happened to Olivia — and how it might affect them all.

So I'd have to say if readers picked up the paperback and flipped to page 69, they'd get a pretty good idea of what's going on in the story!

Visit Avery Bishop's website.

--Marshal Zeringue