“I looked up because of the laughter, and kept looking because of the girls.”

So begins our next MashReads selection, author Emma Cline’s debut novel The Girls. 

Inspired by the Charles Manson murders in the ’60s, The Girls tells the story of 14-year-old Evie Boyd, a teenager growing up in Northern California in 1969. One day as Evie is preparing to leave for boarding school, she notices a gang of girls, led by the enigmatic Suzanne, walking through a park in her neighborhood and is immediately drawn to them.

“The sun spiked through the trees like always — the drowsy willows, the hot wind gusting over the picnic blankets — but the familiarity of the day was disturbed by the path the girls cut across the regular world. Sleek and thoughtless as sharks breaching the water.”

But the gang isn’t exactly what Evie expected. Under the tutelage of Suzanne, Evie is pulled into a ranch commune led by a cult-leader. Eager for acceptance, Evie soon finds herself on a path of crime and violence, all under the guise of freedom and friendship.

Haunting, mesmerizing and, perhaps most disturbingly, painfully relatable, The Girls is a look at the simultaneous angst, aimlessness and ennui of being a teenager, and how that combination can so easily lead us to places we previously thought unimaginable.

This month, Mashable‘s social book club MashReads will be reading and discussing The Girls. You can join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. And don’t forget to use the hashtag #MashReads to let us know what you think of the book.

Also, Emma Cline will be chatting with MashReads IRL on Sept. 29, at 6:30pm EST, at MashableHQ in New York City. We hope that you can join us. You can RSVP here.

Happy reading, everyone!