The Note

The Note Synopsis

It was only meant to be a prank . . .

May has always been the good girl, the rule follower.

But even good girls have secrets.

When she reunites with her two best friends for a holiday in the Hamptons, a drunken joke lands the trio in the middle of a missing persons investigation.

As the case takes a deadly turn, and long buried secrets are uncovered, the three friends are suddenly unsure who they can trust, least of all each other.

A letter from the author:

Dear Reader,

About three years ago, on one of our annual weekend getaways, two of my best friends and I had circled block after block, struggling to find a parking spot in a popular vacation town, before we finally saw a man heading toward a car, keys in hand.

On went our turn signal, the universal language that the spot was now ours. We waited patiently as the departing driver took his time behind the wheel before we saw the pleasing red glow of his reverse lights. Almost there. But as soon as he backed out, an adorable little sports car approached from the opposite direction, brazenly swooping into “our” spot.

We eventually parked in a worse location, but two hours later, that adorable little car taunted us through the window of a wine bar where we’d landed. We began joking about all the (petty) shenanigans we could pull as payback to the spot-stealing couple.

Our friendly waitress and a few people at the next table joined in on the conversation. It was fun. Then someone wrote a note on a yellow cocktail napkin. It wasn’t about the parking spot at all. It was mean. It was the kind of note that would stir up trouble. But it was a joke, and so we all laughed some more.

Later that afternoon, we passed the car again, and this time, a yellow cocktail napkin was under the windshield wiper. Someone had left the note that was supposed to be a joke. And then my imagination couldn’t let it drop, because some of my favourite books are about big things that can go wrong because of one small wrong move.

In The Note, one little note on a cocktail napkin sets a dangerous chain of events in motion during a girls’ trip to the Hamptons. But a plot set-up isn’t really what a book is about.

The Note begins with an epigraph from Walter Winchell: “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” What makes the novel special to me is the bond among the three lifelong friends at the heart of it—May, Lauren, and Kelsey. Their friendship is intense and complex and enduring. It has weathered trauma, loss, and tragedy, but can nevertheless feel fragile. And it turns out, they all have secrets.

So when the three women find themselves in the middle of a police investigation, they have to ask themselves if there are limits to how far they’ll go to support one another.

I hope you’ll agree that The Note is a twisty and surprising read, but I also hope you’ll be thinking about May, Lauren, and Kelsey long after you finish the last page.

Alafair Burke