#BookExtract-‘The Retreat’ by Sherri Smith

About the book…

Sherri Smith illuminates the dark side of the self-care and wellness industry in a thrilling ride of revenge perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty’s ‘Nine Perfect Strangers’.

Katie Manning was a beloved child star until her mid-teens when her manager attacked and permanently scarred her face, effectively ending her career and sending her on a path of all-too-familiar post-Hollywood self-destruction.

Now twenty-seven, Katie wants a better answer to those clickbait “Where Are They Now?” articles that float around online. An answer she hopes to find when her brother’s too-good-to-be-true fiancee invites her to a wellness retreat upstate.

Together with Katie’s two best friends-one struggling with crippling debt and family obligations, one running away from a failed job and relationship-Katie will try to find the inner peace promised at the tranquil retreat. But finding oneself just might drudge up more memories than Katie is prepared to deal with.

Each woman has come to the retreat for different reasons.

Each has her secrets to hide.

And at the end of this weekend, only one will be left standing.

‘The Retreat’ by Sherri Smith is published by Titan Books in paperback and is available now.

I am absolutely thrilled to be bringing you an extract this morning, and a review this afternoon so hopefully one, the other or both will make you grab your bag and run out the door to buy it!

What to do next? Now that was the question, wasn’t it?

Katie had been working since she was four years old. By the age of seven all the way through to a geriatric fifteen, she was Shelby Spade, Kid Detective and already the official family meal ticket for her brother, heavily Botoxed stage mom, and disappearing father. Her mother, of course, pushed her to keep acting, giving her the usual speech that she was a natural performer right out of the womb, which was really just Lucy’s way to justify selling off Katie’s childhood. But Katie knew her red hair, cutesy chipmunk cheeks, and freckled nose did not translate well into adulthood going by the roles she was offered—mostly soft porn or murder victims because people like to watch self-piteous, spoiled ex–child stars get either fucked or murdered—and then of course there was the scar.

But before delving into an existential crisis—she had all week- end to do that—she should probably get up first and pack.

She’d meant to do it the night before, but somehow she just hadn’t.

Katie did a floppy roll out of bed, wandered over to her closet, pulled out her suitcase, and started tossing in Lycra pants, matching tank tops, and pullovers, tags still on, purchased solely for this trip.

Just one suitcase—she wasn’t going to pull a Lacey Evans, who brought nine suitcases to summer camp in season 1, episode 11. This pathetic mental reference to Shelby Spade’s mean-girl enemy refreshed Katie’s self-loathing.

She was twenty-seven now, the age when celebrities (and yes, she used celebrity loosely) died from their bad habits. Their ten- der, bloated, black-hole bodies, where nothing was ever enough, simply gave out. And here she’d cynically muse about how the long-dead Shelby Spade franchise would get a bump in reve- nue, maybe even a reboot with some other, cuter girl to replace her.

Just last week, she saw her face in one of those “Stars you loved as a kid—where are they now?” clickbait sideshows. It read:

Just admit it—if you were born in the ’90s, you probably owned a Shelby Spade lunch box or doll or duvet set or gut- wrenching perfume. For seven seasons Katie Manning played the adorable—and, let’s face it, annoying as hell— Shelby Spade, Kid Detective. Her signature line, “i’ll sooooolve it,” had us all glued to our TV sets to follow squeaky-clean Shelby’s slapstick sleuthing to solve banal crimes from stolen P&J sandwiches to missing library books. This was the orderly world of Shelby where all wrongs were righted and evildoers spent a month in the “hole,” also known as detention. It was a balm to the budding adolescent’s grow- ing confusions about the world at large.

Katie skipped over the part about the Incident that derailed her life.

Katie then went on to attend the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU but dropped out after her first year. She spent her free time club-hopping and making it onto TMZ.

Just when it seemed Manning had finally drifted into ob- scurity (aside from her overactive Instagram account), she resurfaced again last year when an award-winning director cast her to play a Hooters waitress and girlfriend to a sus- pected killer in what would have been a career comeback (though it probably wouldn’t be much of a stretch for Miss

Manning if anyone remembers how well she filled out her trench coat in that last season of Spade).

But then, she recently doled out a highly offensive tweet that resulted in her being fired. The part was recast, and Manning was forced into hiding or at least online banish- ment (bye-bye, Instagram shots of Manning’s hairless cat).

Shelby Spade would not be impressed and would probably sentence Katie Manning to the longest after-school detention ever!

What the clickbait missed was that Katie was depressed. Pro- foundly depressed. The most interesting thing about her was over a decade old. Obviously, she wanted a better answer to the What­ ever happened to question than being a walking ex–child star cli- ché. What to do next? It had plagued her since the series ended.

Intrigued?

I knew you would be!
Don’t forget to check the other bloggers on the tour and see thier thoughts on the thriller already being compared to ‘Gone Girl’ for the chill factor…

About the author..

Sherri Smith spends time with her family and two rescue dogs, and restores vintage furniture that would otherwise be destined for the dump. She lives in Winnipeg, Canada, where the long, cold winters nurture her dark side. ‘Follow Me Down’ is her first thriller, which has been described as “an engrossing page turner” by Diane Chamberlain, bestselling author of ‘The Silent Sister’.

Links-https://www.sherri-smith.com/

Twitter @SLSmith

             @TitanBooks