THE HOT ONE
A memoir of friendship, sex, and murder
A true-crime, coming-of-age story with a tragic twist: a New York editor’s quest to uncover the truth about the brutal murder of her wild and seductive friend in a “riveting…and thoughtful examination of how we grow up and apart” (Cosmopolitan).
As girls growing up in rural New Jersey in the late 1980s, Ashley and Carolyn had everything in common: two outsiders who loved spending afternoons exploring the woods. Only when the girls attended different high schools did they begin to grow apart. While Carolyn struggled to fit in, Ashley quickly became a hot girl: popular, extroverted, and sexually precocious.
After high school, Carolyn entered college in New York City and Ashley ended up in Los Angeles, where she quit school to work as a stripper and an escort, dating actors and older men, and experimenting with drugs. The last time Ashley visited New York, Carolyn was shocked by how they had grown apart. One year later, Ashley was stabbed to death at age twenty-two in her Hollywood home.
“Original and engaging” (Kirkus Reviews), The Hot One is the story of Carolyn’s emotional quest to find out what really happened to her oldest friend. It’s a journey that takes her through the hills of Hollywood, into courtrooms in Los Angeles, to strip clubs in Las Vegas, and back to her own childhood memories as she tries to unravel why she and Ashley became so different. How did Ashley end up the overtly sexual risk-taker—the hot one—while Carolyn was seen as the smart one, the observer? Carolyn’s “memoir will shock and fascinate” (Booklist) readers as she explores the power of female friendships and pays tribute to the ones that stay with you long after they’re gone.
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RECOMMENDED BY NPR, ELLE, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY AND NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY BUZZFEED AND THE NEW YORK POST
"Carolyn Murnick’s insights into the freighted complexities of youth, beauty, and sexuality, and how these forces collide within long, close female friendships, turn an already affecting murder mystery into a story for our time. Never morbid or sentimental, always honest, THE HOT ONE is a wholly original memoir that explores and unpacks the often vexing reality of what it means to be a young woman in the 21st century."
—Kate Bolick, bestselling author of SPINSTER: Making a Life of One’s Own
“Carolyn Murnick's THE HOT ONE is as suspenseful as it is heartfelt and honest— an affecting, revealing investigation into the mysteries at the heart of young friendship.”
—Robert Kolker, bestselling author of LOST GIRLS: An Unsolved American Mystery
"Both an introspective look at young female friendship and a riveting true-crime tale."
—Entertainment Weekly
"A rueful exploration of how two New Jersey girls, such close friends in fifth grade that they felt they were nearly the same person, found themselves on very different paths."
—Slate
"Thoughtful and thorough, both in exploring the dynamics of female friendships and reporting from chilling courtroom hearings."
—The Cut
"An elegy to female friendship and the ways it shapes us, even as we grow older and grow apart."
—Refinery29
"A true crime page-turner and also a really lovely meditation on friendships between women and the way they change."
—Slate's DoubleX Gabfest
"Murnick’s memoir will shock and fascinate."
—Booklist