The Whole World, by Emily Winslow (Random House; $25)

So these two American college students, Polly and Liv, meet up at Cambridge. Both have family issues: Polly is just starting to recover from the ghastly incident that landed her father in jail. Liv's father, meanwhile, lost his $4 million fortune when the dot-com bubble burst and she can't quite afford the place. She takes a job sorting old photos for Professor Gretchen Paul, who is writing a biography of her novelist mother, but is going blind.

Both Polly and Liv fall for Nick, a graduate student in paleobiology. "He's so cute!" Liv shrieks. "Do you think he likes me?" Actually, he chooses Polly, but when he kisses her, she throws up. Not, apparently, from his lack of kissing skill, but because being with him reminds her of her family tragedy. Nick, the cad, nurses his hurt ego by hooking up with Liv instead, but then is obvious about wanting to have nothing more to do with her.

Then Nick disappears.

So who did it? Polly's mother, who shows up in Cambridge and starts stalking her daughter's friends, warning them of Polly's past? Liv, who flies into a jealous rage when she learns on the news that Nick had been with Polly before their tryst?

Or is the actual mystery in this book not related to Nick at all?

Winslow's writing is fine, and she manages to sustain a level of hysteria that makes The Whole World read as if it were written by a Brit, rather than by an American living in Cambridge, which she currently is. My main complaint is that the mystery started down one path and then verged onto another. The misdirection made it seem like Winslow had started one mystery and then changed her mind. The book would have been stronger had she kept to one or the other. That being said, she shows great promise as a writer.