The bitch goddess notebook - Martha O'Connor

Set in a small-town high school in Illinois in 1988, three misfit girls join forces with devastating consequences. Rennie, the stunningly attractive straight-A student, finds herself way out of her depth when she embarks on an affair with her married teacher. Cherry builds a shrine to Princess Diana in her bedroom while nursing her hippy mother through her coke-fuelled rages. Amy, who tears up her cheerleader's uniform while her drunken parents concentrate on presenting a faade of perfect family life to the outside world. Together the three girls form the Bitch Goddesses, a take-no-prisoners gang of fierce teenage rebellion. They swear to stick together, whatever life throws at them, until one night at Porter's Point when something so horrific happens it shatters their friendship forever. Fifteen years on, Rennie is a writer living in New York, struggling to keep her life on track and hiding an erotic obsession. In her Lake Superior show-home, a heavily pregnant Amy is certain that her husband is cheating on her and that she is jinxed by her past. Cherry, a model patient - obedient, co-operative, taking her medication on time - wakes in blind terror every night in an institution, dreaming of four red letters carved on human skin. The Bitch Goddesses may have grown up, but one way or another they must come to terms with a shared past...