A Top Summer Read from E!News, People Magazine Pick: “Best New Books,” A Best Southern Book of June from Southern Review of Books, Most Anticipated for June from The Millions, Best Crime Fiction for June from The Times, Best Recent Crime / Thriller from The Guardian, and an Amazon Editors Best Book of June.

“Gripping.” -People Magazine

“The quiet spectacles of Kauffman’s novels, which unfold in working-class, middle-American settings, are the instances of grace and dignity encased within harrowing circumstances…The House on Fripp Island, her third novel in less than four years, is new territory for Kauffman, given its structure as a beach thriller. Yet for all its suspense, the book is driven by its attunement to class distinctions and companionship…A murder plot adds a whiff of intrigue to each interaction, but the book’s chief thrills, as in Kauffman’s earlier novels, arrive via tenderly written dialogue…Each of Fripp Island’s characters is both destructive and fundamentally decent, and all equally helpless when faced with mortality.” -Pete Tosiello, Guernica Magazine

”You know someone will be dead by the end of Kauffman’s suspenseful chiller, but the tension derives not so much from the question of who, as from the novel’s furtive atmospherics…While the fault lines…allow for plenty of tart observations on marital disenchantment, Kauffman spins a secondary, far more disconcerting story about the toxic power of suspicion and rumour. A smart summer read.” -The Daily Mail

"Kauffman’s prologue is a ghost story, confirming that one character will not survive this summer vacation, and in the page-turner pacing toward that murderous revelation, the author excels at dissecting family dynamics. The writing is at its best exploring the interior lives of its most vulnerable characters through loss of innocence and perilous transitions from their childhoods into the beginnings of adolescence and adulthood...The tensions between predators and prey — and how quickly one can become the other — haunt the novel, from its ominous beginning to its heartrending conclusion. But Kauffman also deftly crafts moments of great tenderness and light throughout, reminding us that memory endures and life perseveres, even after a harrowing and grievous loss." -The Charleston Post and Courier

“The House on Fripp Island is about how “things aren’t always as they seem”. It is rare to care about every character in a crime novel. Rebecca Kauffman, in wryly highlighting the inherent sadness of things, ultimately resembles not Alice Sebold but the great Alice Munro.” -The Times

“The House on Fripp Island sets the reader up for one story, but then slyly delivers a different, even better story. A prologue lets us know that twenty years ago, someone died on a trip but we aren’t told who or why or by whose hand… It becomes apparent that both families are weathering some changes, alliances form, and secrets shaped by class, loyalty, ambition, fidelity, and desire bubble to the surface. Readers will be drawn into a smart, keenly-observed look at family dynamics as they try to figure out which of the eight characters was speaking from the grave in this atmospheric beach read.” -Amazon Official Book Review, Vannessa Cronin

“Kauffman’s keen, atmospheric follow-up to The Gunners explores class, friendship, and dark family secrets…Kauffman’s characters leap off the page; her portrait of Rae, a girl who longs to be seen as a woman, is especially vivid, as is her rendering of Lisa and Poppy’s fraught yet affectionate relationship. Readers will devour this suspenseful summer drama..” -Publisher’s Weekly

“This is subtly suspenseful, unsettling stuff, the characters drawn with such vivid precision that they fairly jump off the page.” -The Guardian

“The tensions between the haves and the have-nots offer an insight into contemporary America…In watchful prose by turns powerful and delicate, the action builds to an event as inevitable as it was unpredictable. Gripping.” -The Sunday Times

"Kauffman’s (The Gunners, 2018) third literary novel is assured, enjoyable, and well crafted…This novel thoughtfully considers a complex system in which eight characters, each with fears, desires, and secrets, are contained in a single house. The reader enjoys the catbird seat, with a window into the interior lives of all…The writing is deceptively simple, easy to read while illuminating what is difficult. This is both a whodunit and a pleasurable novel about human experience.” -Booklist

“Our assumptions about whose tensions, desires, rages, and shy longings might erupt into murder are provoked and reversed right up until the final pages, when the mystery of Fripp Island is revealed. An entertaining and ultimately tender book.” -Kirkus Reviews

“There is a long and almost gentle aftermath. From the start we knew that someone would be killed, the trick is to guess who shall be the victim and who the perpetrator. The climax is the inevitable outcome of the events as they have been so artfully recorded…Under the guise of a skilful domestic whodunnit Rebecca Kauffman has produced a disturbing novel for our times.” -Shots Magazine

“Rebecca Kauffman turns each cog of this compelling murder-mystery with a delightfully sensual slowness. Her taut prose and punchy observations add to her steady, assured delivery…The novel throbs not from the urgency of a thriller, but instead from the escalating tensions of dark familial secrets that battle to stay contained.” -The Irish Examiner

“…a compelling slice of domestic noir.” -Crime Fiction Lover