Seven women, inextricably linked by one man, must figure out which of them killed him in order to protect one another in this electrifying debut thriller.New Year’s Eve, 1999.Seven women are gathered in a hotel room at midnight; a man''s head sits in the center of the floor. They all had a motive to kill Jamie Spellman. They all swear they didn''t. But in order to protect one another, they have to find out who did.The ex, who drowns her darkest secret in a hip flask as the woman she loves drifts further away.The wife, living out her fairytale marriage in a house tucked into woods so thick no one can hear a scream.The widow, praying to a past she no longer knows whether she can trust.The teenager, whose wide-eyed crush has trapped her in an unrecognizable future.The mother figure, battling nature versus nurture under the weight of her own guilt.The friend, forced to choose sides over and over, until she learns the price of choosing wrong.And the journalist, who brought them all together—but underestimated how far one of them would go to keep believing the story they’d been told. Against the ticking clock of a murder investigation, each woman’s secret is brought to light as the connections between them converge to reveal a killer. Marking the debut of an extraordinary new talent, Rose Wilding''s Speak of the Devil explores the roles into which women are cast in the lives of terrible men…and the fallout when they refuse to play pretend for one moment longer.