Please Join Us by Catherine McKenzie

 

This is a reasonably effective legal thriller (it's written by a former practicing lawyer, and it's steeped in legal and legalistic processes, it's a legal thriller regardless of whether the publisher bothers to call it one) that also has things to say about feminism and women's friendships and cults and hero-worship and family; the story is sturdy enough to carry much of that, though the cultish aspects of the sisterhood group in it are really obvious, as is the fact there's a larger plan at play. The story starts off in two timelines, more or less, but it's persistently clear about when you are, and you're always in the head of one (first-person) narrator. Many of the characters end up being really murky, because many of them are lying from the first time you see them and don't stop, which does sometimes make it a little hard to tell what's going on, but things do resolve pretty clearly, with a hint that at least some things will go better, that the good guys have won (and the protagonist--that first-person narrator--is very much a good-guy, as are some small number of other characters).