"A tantalizing thriller written in nuanced and luminous prose, The Plunge is a deep dive into loss, longing, and the price of passion. Lila writes with a singular power that comes from her understanding of the twists and turns of the complexities of female desire. I was immersed from the first to the last page." --Daphne Merkin, author of 22 Minutes of Unconditional Love "The Plunge is a tremendous debut novel--gripping, enthralling and sneakily profound--written with great brio and assuredness." --William Boyd, bestselling author of Any Human Heart "The Plunge is a sophisticated thriller that envelops the reader in secrets--secrets that stimulate and alleviate the narrator's fear and inertia. But the strain of pretenses and the constant adaptation they require lead to dangerous entanglements here. The narrator, adept at transforming suffering into pleasure, reminds us that the past is a kind of prophecy." --Susanna Moore, author of The Lost Wife "A startling and smoldering debut that thrums with suspense.
The Plunge is a brilliantly crafted study of desire, deception, and the traumatic edges of womanhood that pulls you into its emotional undertow. Raicek will leave you gasping for air long after the final sentence." --Christina McDowell, author of The Cave Dwellers "The it girl novel of the summer. Like a cult euro-chic thriller, The Plunge is seductive, disquieting, and reveals the dark undercurrents roiling beneath its gleaming surfaces." --Marisa Meltzer, Vanity Fair "The Plunge has a villa full of the most scintillating and malevolently eroticized characters since the cunning aristocrats of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Raicek's literary debut is thrilling, hypnotic, and whip-smart." --Griffin Dunne, author of The Friday Afternoon Club "A twisty, tense psychological thriller, tantalizingly sexy and explosively unnerving." --Booklist "A lush erotic-entanglement novel.
" --Library Journal "A wildly sensational experience. A tantalizing romantic triangle with more than a hint of menace." --Kirkus Reviews "Playwright Raicek debuts a seductive literary thriller. The plot is propulsive, and Raicek keeps the reader guessing at the characters' true intentions." --Publishers Weekly "This is the smart, sexy, scandalous read of the season." --Town & Country "A jet-set thriller centering around a dangerous liaison. It's a beach read-- if the sand were black, and the glamorous woman two towels over was crying behind oversized Prada sunglasses." --Avenue Magazine "Raicek examines desire (explicitly), grief (without sentimentality), obsession (and why it is often misunderstood in women), and betrayal in all their guises.
The result is a propulsive thriller." --Tertulia "The Plunge's psychosexual intrigue makes it an apt binge read, but the novel deals in less easily packaged emotional territory: what regaining trust--in oneself and others--looks like after trauma, how cycles of denial and avoidance register in a body, where the fear of feeling numb will lead you." --Cultured Magazine "A web of erotic intrigue, betrayal and NSFW texts sent from under dinner tables." --Wall Street Journal.