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Dexter meets Mr. and Mrs. Smith in this wildly compulsive debut thriller about a couple whose fifteen-year marriage has finally gotten too interesting…

Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams, and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored.

We look like a normal couple. We’re your neighbors, the parents of your kid’s friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with.

We all have our secrets to keeping a marriage alive.

Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.

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MY REVIEW

Millicent and her husband are a married couple with two teenagers, great jobs, and a home in a nice neighborhood. They also have a shared interest in murder.

Told from the husband’s point of view. Interestingly, the husband is never named. He and his wife, Millicent, live in a nice, quiet neighborhood. Millicent and her husband occasionally have date nights, but these aren’t the usual type of date nights. During these dates, they plot and scheme how to get away with murder.

Wonderful debut novel. Well written story with complex characters and an intriguing plot. Psychological thrillers often have one crazy spouse, but in My Lovely Wife, the readers get a double dose of demented.

My Lovely Wife is a deliciously wicked domestic thriller. Great for fans of psychological thrillers. Twisted, dark, and disturbing.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss in exchange for an honest review.

Books by Samantha Downing:

1. My Lovely Wife
2. He Started It
3. Sleeping Dogs Lie
4. For Your Own Good
5. A Twisted Love Story
6. Too Old for This

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For fans of B. A. Paris and Mary Kubica comes a propulsive, twisting psychological thriller that asks, How can you save someone else if you can’t save yourself?

After years of learning how to manage her bipolar disorder, Emily Firestone finally has it under control. Even better, her life is coming together: she’s got a great job, her own place, and a boyfriend, Paolo, who adores her. So when Paolo suggests a weekend sailing trip, Emily agrees—wine, water, and the man she loves? What could be better? But when Emily wakes the morning after they set sail, the boat is still adrift…and Paolo is gone.

A strong swimmer, there’s no way Paolo drowned, but Emily is at a loss for any other explanation. Where else could he have gone? And why? As the hours and days pass by, each moment marking Paolo’s disappearance, Emily’s hard-won stability begins to slip.

But when Emily uncovers evidence suggesting Paolo was murdered, the investigation throws her mania into overdrive, even as she becomes a person of interest in her own personal tragedy. To clear her name, Emily must find the truth—but can she hold onto her own sanity in the process?

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MY REVIEW

While on a sailing trip, Emily wakes to find her boyfriend Paolo is missing. Since Paolo is a strong swimmer, Emily finds it hard to believe he could have drowned. As days pass, Paolo’s disappearance starts to lean toward murder… with Emily as a suspect. Emily struggles with managing her bipolar disorder, which she though was under control, while she searches for answers to what happened to Paolo.

Emily makes for an interesting unreliable narrator. She has been managing her bipolar disorder well, but when Paolo goes missing and she becomes a suspect, she no longer has control. In addition to that, her memory of the night Paolo went missing is very hazy. The fun thing about unreliable narrators is the reader never knows if they can be trusted.

When Emily looks into Paolo’s disappearance, she learns more about his work. Paolo works in medical research, and while Emily was aware of the virus he was working with, she learns a lot more about his research and coworkers as she questions what happened to him.

And Then You Were Gone is a fast-paced psychological thriller. Intriguing, suspenseful, and twisty.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Books by R.J. Jacobs:

1. And Then You Were Gone
2. Somewhere in the Dark
3. Always the First to Die
4. This Is How We End Things

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A page-turning debut of suspense about a young couple desperate to have a child of their own—and the unsettling consequences of getting what they always wanted.

Christopher and Hannah are a happily married surgeon and nurse with picture-perfect lives. All that’s missing is a child. When Janie, an abandoned six-year-old, turns up at their hospital, Christopher forms an instant connection with her, and he convinces Hannah they should take her home as their own.

But Janie is no ordinary child, and her damaged psyche proves to be more than her new parents were expecting. Janie is fiercely devoted to Christopher, but she acts out in increasingly disturbing ways, directing all her rage at Hannah. Unable to bond with Janie, Hannah is drowning under the pressure, and Christopher refuses to see Janie’s true nature.

Hannah knows that Janie is manipulating Christopher and isolating him from her, despite Hannah’s attempts to bring them all together. But as Janie’s behavior threatens to tear Christopher and Hannah apart, the truth behind Janie’s past may be enough to push them all over the edge.

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MY REVIEW

Christopher and Hannah are a happy couple, but they long to have a child. When Janie, an abandoned six-year-old, shows up at the hospital where they work, Christopher wants to foster her. Despite the warnings about raising a child with an abusive past, they take her into their home and family. They are not prepared for the challenges they face.

The Perfect Child is told with alternating points of view – Christopher, Hannah, and Piper, Janie’s social worker. Christopher adores Janie and finds it difficult to believe she is capable of the harmful behavior others warn him about. Hannah is more realistic about the difficulties they face. Piper is Janie’s social worker, and presents an outsider’s view of the family and their behaviors.

It’s no surprise that Janie suffers from physical and mental issues due to her abusive past. With their medical background, Christopher and Hannah do seem like the perfect couple to take care of Janie. Unfortunately, Christopher is blinded by his love, and Janie’s manipulation, to see how bad things are. My biggest issue with this book was Christopher’s disregard for Hannah’s concerns and the safety of their family. If Christopher hadn’t been such a dolt, this would have been a better book for me.

The Perfect Child disturbing domestic thriller. While it is clear something very bad has happened, the very bad thing isn’t revealed until late in the book. Makes for a suspenseful read. Good for fans of Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage.

Books by Lucinda Berry:

1. Missing Parts
2. Phantom Limb
3. Appetite for Innocence
4. Saving Noah
5. The Perfect Child
6. When She Returned
7. The Best of Friends
8. The Secrets of Us
9. Under Her Care
10. Off the Deep End
11. Keep Your Friends Close

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In the vein of Allison Brennan, Michelle Adams’s Between the Lies is an addictive psychological thriller with twists that keep the reader guessing until the last page, in which a woman who’s lost her memory is back home with a family she doesn’t know—who are keeping secrets of their own.

The truth is hiding between the lies.

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What would you do if you woke up and didn’t know who you were?

Chloe Daniels regains consciousness in a hospital with no memory of how she got there.
She doesn’t recognise the strangers who call themselves family. She can’t even remember her own name.

What if your past remained a mystery?

As she slowly recovers, her parents and sister begin to share details of her life.
The successful career. The seaside home. The near-fatal car crash.
But Chloe senses they’re keeping dark secrets—and her determination to uncover the truth will have devastating consequences.

What if the people you should be able to trust are lying to you?

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MY REVIEW

Chloe awakens in the hospital after a terrible car accident. Not only does she not remember the accident, but she doesn’t remember who she is or anything about her life and family. Her parents and sister attempt to help her remember her life, but Chloe feels they are also keeping secrets.

It took me a little while to get into this story. Once I did, it was a thrilling ride. Complex and twisty story. Intriguing characters, with everyone seemingly hiding something. Chloe is a bit of an unreliable narrator. Her memory loss is clearly an issue, and her regaining of memories is, let’s say, suspicious. As Chloe starts to learn more about who she is, she questions everything about the accident and what really happened.

Between the Lies is good for fans of psychological thrillers, especially ones where the protagonist has memory loss. Dark, intense, and suspenseful.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Books by Michelle Adams:

1. If You Knew My SIster
2. Between the Lies
3. Little Wishes

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Mother. Hero. Liar. Killer. How can you tell when all you have is…

PIECES OF HER

What if the person you thought you knew best turns out to be someone you never knew at all . . . ?

Andrea knows everything about her mother, Laura. She knows she’s spent her whole life in the small beachside town of Belle Isle; she knows she’s never wanted anything more than to live a quiet life as a pillar of the community; she knows she’s never kept a secret in her life. Because we all know our mothers, don’t we?

But all that changes when a trip to the mall explodes into violence and Andrea suddenly sees a completely different side to Laura. Because it turns out that before Laura was Laura, she was someone completely different. For nearly thirty years she’s been hiding from her previous identity, lying low in the hope that no one would ever find her. But now she’s been exposed, and nothing will ever be the same again.

The police want answers and Laura’s innocence is on the line, but she won’t speak to anyone, including her own daughter. Andrea is on a desperate journey following the breadcrumb trail of her mother’s past. And if she can’t uncover the secrets hidden there, there may be no future for either one of them. . . .

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MY REVIEW

Andrea (Andy) and her mother Laura are having lunch at a mall, when a man shows up and starts shooting. Andy sees a very different side of her mother during the attack. Andy soon learns her mother wasn’t always Laura. In fact, Laura has been hiding from her past for thirty years. Andy starts on a journey to find who her mother really is.

Told using multiple timelines, this novel flips between 2018 and 1986. The present day story opens with Andy realizing there is more to her mother than she ever thought. This revelation leads Andy on a search into her mother’s past. The past (1986) is Laura’s story about who she was and how she became the woman she is in the present timeline.

Laura has maintained a low-key lifestyle, but that changes when she and her daughter are under attack. It turns out, she’s pretty badass. On the flip side, Andy is insecure, dependent, and timid.

This story has plenty of mystery and action, but it also examines a mother-daughter relationship. The mystery is who is Laura, and what is she hiding. The action is bouts of violence and mayhem in both timelines. The mother-daughter relationship shows that Laura had a life before becoming a mother.

I enjoyed Pieces of Her by Karin Slaughter, but it was different than others I’ve read by her. I loved The Good Daughter and Pretty Girls, but both of those novels are darker and more graphic than Pieces of Her.

Pieces of Her is an intense story that involves secrets and lies. Intriguing, suspenseful, and twisty.

Books in the Andrea Oliver series:

1. Pieces of Her
2. Girl, Forgotten

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A seemingly perfect marriage is threatened by the deadly secrets husband and wife keep from each other.

Susannah, a young widow and single mother, has remarried well: to Max, a charismatic artist and popular speaker whose career took her and her fifteen-year-old son out of New York City and to a quiet Vermont university town. Strong-willed and attractive, Susannah expects that her life is perfectly in place again. Then one quiet morning she finds a note on her door: I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

Max dismisses the note as a prank. But days after a neighborhood couple comes to dinner, the husband mysteriously dies in a tragic accident while on a run with Max. Soon thereafter, a second note appears on their door: DID YOU GET AWAY WITH IT?

Both Susannah and Max are keeping secrets from the world and from each other—secrets that could destroy their family and everything they have built. Thomas Christopher Greene’s The Perfect Liar is a thrilling novel told through the alternating perspectives of Susannah and Max with a shocking climax that no one will expect, from the bestselling author of The Headmaster’s Wife.

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MY REVIEW

Max and Susannah seem to have a great life. When a mysterious note shows up on their door, they want to ignore it, but then a second note appears.

The Perfect Liar is told from alternating points of view, Max and Susannah both have secrets they don’t want getting out. When Susannah met Max, they seemed to fit together perfectly. They met in New York City, but with the success of Max’s career have moved to Vermont. Everything is going well for them, until the mysterious notes start to arrive.

The plot was interesting. The two main characters are both hiding dark secrets. Someone is leaving creepy notes on their door. It seems like a great read, but I never really connected with the story or the characters.

I’ve seen some great reviews for The Perfect Liar, and I imagine it will be a hit with some fans of psychological thrillers. For me, it was good, but not great. Best for fans of dark domestic thrillers with unlikable characters.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.