Happy Tuesday evening all!
As I mentioned busy day! And I have to give major props to those of you that post this much every day! Another wonderful book this time a thrilling thriller! Thanks Noelle for my invitation to this tour!🌺
My Thoughts
Absorbing. Intense. Suspenseful.
A well constructed thriller that started off slowly and ended with a GASP. Wendy Clark’s debut novel is a bit of a genre mash up. This book perfectly combined women’s fiction with psychological thriller. An entertaining story that combined character development, relationship dynamics, dark Secrets, hurtful lies, crazy twists, and wild turns. I would advise you however to completely ignore the blurb it is a bit misleading.
This book bounces around between time and perspective. We are told the story from both Leona and Beth’s perspectives, as well as Ria‘s story in tandem. Leona is a loving devoted overprotective mother with a secret past. Beth her daughter now 15 is fiercely trying to break out of her mothers clutches. She does not feel as though she fits in at school and soon finds herself entangled with an older man. Ria is pregnant and in a bad situation. She married a man who she thought was the love of her life. Unfortunately she now finds herself trapped in a marriage to a controlling narcissist. You know that Leona and Ria‘s story somehow are tied together, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how. Then there’s this older man that Beth is involved with, how does he fit into the story?
This book was like a puzzle, so many pieces that I enjoyed trying to put together. I liked how things were slowly revealed to us through Leona‘s sessions with her therapist. I was seriously confounded at how Ria could have possibly hurt Leona so terribly. I was also disturbed that a 24 year old and a 15-year-old were involved, but it did eventually play into the story. The last 20% of this book was seriously intense. The stress was palpable and I was as anxious as these characters. And that ending… well played Miss Clark!
*** thank you so much Bookouture for my copy of this book ***
About the Book
Everyone knows Leona would do anything for her daughter Beth: she moved to Church Langdon to send Beth to the best school, worked hard to build a successful business to support them and found them the perfect little cottage to call home. Leona and Beth hike together, shop together, share their hopes and fears with one another. People say they’re more like best friends than mother and daughter.
It’s the relationship every mother dreams of.
But their closeness means that Beth struggles to make friends. Her mother has kept her sheltered from the world. She’s more reliant on her mother’s love. More vulnerable.
When Beth finds an envelope hidden under the floorboards of their home, the contents make her heart stop. Everything she thought she knew about her mother is a lie. And she realises there is no one she can turn to for help.
What if you’ve been protected from strangers your whole life, but the one person you can’t trust is the person closest to home?
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