🌟🌟🌟🌟1/2
A riveting and powerful read, this multilayered story winds and sweeps through the lives of characters that at first glance, almost appear to have it all. Almost, but not quite, as soon becomes apparent when a young girl is murdered, and it becomes likely that the seventeen-year-old children of our three main protagonists are inextricably tied up in the drama. Somehow.
A soon-to-become terrifying peek into the family lives of our main protagonists, inhabitants of a wealthy and privileged slice of suburbia that could be just about anywhere in multi-millionaire-town America, this story takes the reader on a dark and suspenseful ride into what may or may not be psychopathy, in some of its most insidious strains.
Alice and Celia are friends, having met through the relationship in place between their two children – Hannah and Jack, respectively. Their mansion-centered lives are (at least on the surface) settled; for Celia through her three strapping sons, and the arms of her handsome, witty and charming husband, Oliver, a managing partner in the city’s largest law firm. Alice, on the other hand, is more of a wildcard, both in temperament and appetites, struggling to understand both her secretive tech-genius husband Geoff, and her troubled and needy step-daughter Hannah. Alice, however, is not afraid to take her happiness into her own hands. The plot can only thicken when we meet Michel, a handsome Lebanese restauranteur, the father of Christopher, who is the best friend of Jack, and the third link in a chain that binds these three together in a drama that will be revealed, albeit slowly, with ragged layers and ribbons, obfuscating truth so terrible it would perhaps have been better left sequestered.
Just exactly what was Jack, Hannah, and Christopher’s role to play in the murder of a young woman? With twists and turns and lies and deceit, so densely woven you can barely find your way through it, this book is hard to put down, and a terrifically compulsive read.
A great big thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for an ARC of this book. All thoughts presented are my own.
