(Image from Barnes & Noble)

Drawn together while studying at Cambridge University, Americans Polly Bailey and Liv Dahl become friends.  They're both enamored of Nick Frey, a 24-year-old grad student in paleobiology.  The trio bond over a shared job, which entails helping a blind professor sort the papers of her novelist mother.  When Nick suddenly vanishes, however, it throws the friends' cozy relationship into a tailspin.  What happened to the charismatic Brit?  

When D.I. Morris Keene and his partner, DS Chloe Frohmann, start digging into Nick's strange disappearance, a tangle of secrets about all of the students start coming to light.  And they aren't the only ones with something to hide.  Gretchen Paul, the blind professor, will make startling discoveries about her own past, which will irrevocably change her future.  As the detectives strive to sort it all out, all the players will realize how little anyone can ever really know another.

I'm not sure what to say about The Whole World, the first installment in the Keene and Frohmann series by Emily Winslow.  It's a strange novel, in many ways.  The characters are almost wholly unlikable, the story plods along very slowly, and when plot "twists" do come, they seem outrageously far-fetched.  Unfocused and dull, The Whole World is just an odd, odd book.  I finished it, but I'm not really sure why I bothered.  

(Readalikes:  Hm, nothing is coming to mind.  You?)

Grade:

If this were a movie, it would be rated:

for language, violence, and sexual content

To the FTC, with love:  I (regrettably) bought a (cheap) copy of The Whole World from Amazon with a portion of the millions I make from my lucrative career as a book blogger.  Ha ha.