This Irish crime thriller is so tense that it’ll keep you up at night

Andrea Mara is back with your new favourite Irish thriller

Andrea Mara's Such a Nice Girl is set for release on May 7th, and it has got to be one of the most thrilling novels of 2026 so far.

This Irish thriller is every parent's worst nightmare come to life; a story of twists, turns, and truths that'll keep you up at night.

Everyone has secrets. Even your daughter…

The morning after a glamorous, luxury wedding, you and your best friend go to wake your twenty-four-year-old daughters. You open the door to their shared room in the pool-house and find a lamp smashed on the floor, a blood stain on the carpet, a ringing phone – and both girls are nowhere to be seen.

The police come, and you discover something shocking. Something inexplicable. Is one of your daughters trying to kill the other? And that’s when you and your best friend begin to unravel what's really going on between the girls.

You need to work together to find your daughters, testing your friendship to its limits. And you can’t help but wonder: which girl is the killer and which is the victim?

Such a Nice Girl is a story full of the sharpest twists and turns, ones that'll creep up on you, but ones that also make complete sense to the reader, making you wonder how you never predicted it in the first place.

Mara is a pro at creating a tense crime thriller that is full of complex characters, but one that is also full of heart and perfectly captures the realities of female friendships, especially between mothers. The way she writes about the most frightening maternal worries coming to life is incredible because, although the story is full of intensity and drama, the mothers, Grace and Siobhan, feel like people we know. They're relatable and flawed, and that makes the book all the more special to read. There's nobody quite like Mara when it comes to creating complicated female characters that you're completely drawn to, and that couldn't be truer in Such a Nice Girl.

This is a story about the good, the bad, and the ugly side of female friendship. It's a story that'll leave you wondering what you would do if you found yourself in the shoes of our protagonists, and it's a question that'll undoubtedly haunt you long after you finish the final chapter.

Andrea Mara has perfected the art of writing a gripping and thrilling crime novel, with the most brilliantly developed characters that you simply won't be able to forget about. Such a Nice Girl is a triumph in crime fiction, and a novel Irish readers will be swiping up when it is published on May 7th.

Pre-order it here.