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Robin Merle is the author of the best-selling novel, "A Dangerous Friendship" and the award-winning non-fiction book, "Involuntary Exit: A Woman’s Guide to Thriving After Being Fired." A Dangerous Friendship won the 2026 Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction, the 20th Anniversary National Indie Excellence Award for Contemporary Novel, and the Readers' Favorite Bronze Medal for Literary Fiction.
She has published short fiction in The Chouteau Review, South Carolina Review, Kalliope, and Real Fiction. She holds a master’s degree from The Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, where she earned a fellowship.
Off the page, as a nonprofit executive, she has raised over a half-billion dollars in philanthropic support to improve individuals’ quality of life and access to opportunities. A longtime New Yorker, Robin now lives in Maine with her family.
You can follow Robin and read her blog by visiting www.theprofessionalguide.com. You can also follow her on LinkedIn and Instagram.
Reviewed by Carol Thompson for Readers' Favorite
A Dangerous Friendship by Robin Merle is a novel about grief, obsession, and the strange hunger for connection after loss. The narrator, Tina, begins the story in emotional turmoil, newly divorced and exhausted by a series of endings. Seeking distraction and a reset, she throws herself into small, risky adventures around New York before escaping to a quirky writers’ colony in New Hampshire. There, she meets Spike, a magnetic and volatile woman whose presence feels immediately fated. Spike is witty, intense, and unpredictable, offering Tina both companionship and a doorway into a more reckless version of life. Their bond forms quickly through stories, late-night conversations, and shared performances of bravado, yet it has an undercurrent of danger. As Tina becomes more enthralled, she also begins to question what is true about Spike and what is illusion, realizing that intimacy can blur into fixation.
Robin Merle’s writing is sharp and darkly funny, with sentences that capture the narrator’s vulnerability and keen observational wit. The pacing unfolds in quick, vivid scenes, often built around charged dialogue and surreal social encounters, giving the narrative a dreamlike momentum. Spike’s voice, in particular, crackles with energy, and the author excels at portraying the push and pull of obsessive attachment, where affection and manipulation can be hard to separate. The atmosphere is slightly fevered, drawing readers into Tina’s inner monologue as she tries to make sense of longing, power, and emotional risk. Readers who enjoy character-driven psychological fiction, stories about complicated female bonds, and novels that explore the thin line between fascination and self-destruction will find A Dangerous Friendship especially compelling.
