She is a stay-at-home mother-of-three with boundless reserves of patience, energy, and love. After being friends for a decade, this is how Liz sees Jess.
Then one moment changes everything.
Dark thoughts and carefully guarded secrets surface—and Liz is left questioning everything she thought she knew about her friend, and about herself. The truth can’t come soon enough. (Pub Date: Aug 18, 2020)
This was a little different from what I expected.
Liz has to examine one of her best friend Jess's baby and is surprised to find all the red flags of child abuse. Even though she ends up calling the social service, she still can't believe Jess would hurt her youngest, despite remembering how detached her friend had been toward her daughter.
2.5.
This book is told from three points of view—sometimes a fourth—, going back and forth in group of friends' history as we all try to piece together what happened to the baby. I'm not a big fan of the telling a story through a flashback style, but what really frustrated me was how slowly this made the pace go.
Aside from the pacing issue, I was more ready for a thriller. We do have a mystery or two, it is a little exciting, but it wears off in the middle of all the family and social dramas. So I'd put this in the drama box rather than in the thriller one. Knowing that ahead would prevent me from even picking the book, since I'm not into sappy books, but even if I did start it—because the summary, the cover, it's all very attractive—, I'd know where I was getting into. I've never read any of this author's works either, so I feel a little bit fooled.
The answer to the big mystery surrounding the baby and all the plot twists were predictable and I'm not so sure the explanation for the last plot twist made that much sense. Do people really do that? I'm still frowning at how much stuff had to happen for that to really happen. After waiting so long, I was hoping at least from a big ending, but the book kept going the exact path you predict at the first fifth of it.
As I try to go past my disappointment, I do think there were perks. I liked Liz's character, although even she would make me feel vexed once in a while. Also, despite calling it a drama, or women's fiction as you like it, the reading flowed very well, just as a more normal thriller would go. Some scenes had navel-gazing, so I would have made them shorter, and as I said the pacing was more on the slow side, but it was still good to read, which shows that the book is good after all. It's the reason I thought it deserved a round-up to three stars; it's far from being a bad book.
I'm sure those who like dramas tempered with a psychological thriller should enjoy this book a lot more than I did. At the same time, considering how much the actual genre is not my thing, I already liked it a lot. In other words, it won't hurt to give it a try.
Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.
Rating: 3 out of 5.
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