"Tell Me Everything" by Cambria Brockman is a Beach Read that's Not All That

"Tell Me Everything" is the first novel by Cambria Brockman.  The novel's protagonist is college freshman, Malin who leaves home in TX to attend a 2nd tier Ivy League school in NH.  The novel reflects Brockman's peripatetic upbringing in TX, NH, the UK & Scotland.  These locales are all in keeping with Malin & the college friendships/roommates she acquires while studying literature & living away from home for the first time.  This first time novelist may mature into a richer author but this novel reads like a loose script for a B movie.  Malin makes allusions to her upbringing with an older brother, her tormentor and sociopath who died when they were both young & living at home.  The novel skips from her present days in college back to her youth in TX.  She paints an opaque picture of herself as a loner but not in a self-sufficient, admirable manner.  Never having had friendships growing up, given in part to the fact that her older brother died when they were young, Malin is on a mission to make friends, get top grades and fit in.  Malin takes to heart her father's words of wisdom when leaving her on campus freshman year, "pretend."  Malin narrates her own story which reveals her triumphant acceptance by a band of friends (not unlike the popular TV show "Friends") which include a girl from London, Gemma, and Ruby.  Ruby is the golden best friend who allows Malin as her best friend and has been in a 4 year relationship with her boyfriend John, one of the 3 guys with whom the 3 girls share a home and ongoing bond with for all 4 years.  If this novel seems reminiscent of Donna Tart's intriguing murder mystery set amongst a group of friends on a New England campus, it's due to a deja vu premise.  But, while Tart's novel is an intriguing, literary mystery Brockman's novel is a Y/A coming of age heroine that is sophomoric with a twisted ending that most adults would have seen coming before Malin moves in with her classmates.  For young adult readers, there is a public health warning for toxic controlling relationships which require terminating and perhaps with help from peers & family.  "His hobbies became her hobbies.  Her life had become his.  He had sucked her dry. draining her body of all life and personality." And, be wary of a friend who crosses creepy boundaries.  Malin confides to the reader "I knew reading her diary was wrong.  It was a fucked up, creepy secret of mine."  "Tell Me Everything" gets a passing grade but barely.