The Pact Picoult, Jodi

Chris and Emily have been inseparable since birth — their families live next door, their mothers are best friends, and by seventeen, they're in love. Until the night Emily dies from a gunshot wound, and Chris says it was a suicide pact. But Emily's parents don't believe him. Was it love turned desperate, or something darker? Picoult weaves a courtroom drama with flashbacks through the teens' shared childhood, dissecting the line between devotion and obsession. She's brutal with the questions: How well can you ever know someone? Can love kill? The small-town New England setting feels claustrophobic in the best way, and the dual family perspective — one mourning a daughter, the other defending a son — cuts deep. This is Picoult at her most morally knotty, before her later novels leaned heavier into Issue Book territory. For readers who like their love stories complicated and their thrillers rooted in emotional wreckage.