This is one of my records finishing a book in five freaking hours because I wanted to know what’s gonna happen next and I’m over excited!!!!
I got emails or comments asking me out of the curiosity how I can read so many books in such a short time.
Well, I have three answers for that: Using same fast reading technique since I was a nerd college student who preferred beers and cheap tequila over great wine selections (nerdy moron), practice makes it perfect and if I get a fast pacing, heart throbbing, mind blowing thriller in my head, I obsessively read it till I finish it. Life stops! My obligations and responsibilities are needed to be procrastinated! I don’t sleep, don’t eat unless someone feed me, I only use my spare hand to raise my glass and drink more wine and I prefer adult diapers not to lose much time ( yeap, I used them with my big girl pants lately when I went to the theater to watch “Invisible Man” which I highly recommend and Elizabeth Moss is unique talent!)
So I have second thoughts about this book even though I really really really liked its fast paced, surprising, twisty, whirlwind, moving story. It started with as an angsty romance story about young lovers drifted apart because of a mean, heartless, rich and old witch!(Soap opera alerts!) Poor, young, naïve, genuine, sweet Tabitha, living with her grandparent working at the country club, serving to rich people caught attention of charming, popular Connor Ford. They fell in love when they were young and innocent but Connor’s rich grandmother doesn’t approve their relationship. Class and social status differences tear them apart and after nearly 13 years, divorced, losing her job at hospital from a felony she didn’t commit, still poor, devastated Tabitha encounters with the love of her life at the restaurant she’s waitressing.
So far it was like a second chance romance story and you start making “aaawww” sounds and feel your heart warm with love and passion. But don’t do that!!! Because Connor married with a very rich, powerful and also neurotic and controlling, paranoid and jealous woman, yes we’re talking about redhead, 50 years old, stylish, paparazzis’ favorite celebrity Nina (if this would be a movie, I wish they cast Julianne Moore to play her. She would have killed it!) and at the beginning of the book, she tells us she thinks her husband has an affair and he wants her dead. Yes, Connor boy’s entire brownie scores destroyed by this statement, or “dear diary” confession!
I’m not spilling more beans! But as you may imagine, Nina is dead. Sweet Tabitha finds herself in a situation she is completely trapped and she has no way out and she is in love with Connor so badly but is she so naïve not to see his real face? Could he be killer? Or could she do something for crime of passion? Or tons of enemies did something to Nina? And as a last conclusion could Nina do something to herself and tease us from the beginning?
Overall: I have complex feelings about the book. Romance parts were still good and from the beginning even though she acted a little naïve, I believe in that Tabitha has golden heart and I empathize her deeply. She was the only good guy of the book.
But ending action packed parts were a little long and kept repeating itself. The conclusion was a little dissatisfying but it was still reasonable. But when it comes to whodunit part, it was so obvious, even though I shut down my spidey senses, I could easily find it because it seems like all the arrows show the perpetrator from the beginning. There were so many clue crumbles take us a short cut to Hansel& Gretel’s candy house! (In other words: it was so foreseeable to find whodunit!)
So my latest stars 3.5 but I really liked fast building high tension, Tabitha and dead wife’s POVed story telling, surprising twists, unexpected revelations. You feel like you’re running a marathon wearing two size smaller shoes and you want to keep running by ignoring the bleeding in your feet because you like view, you like pumping adrenalin into your veins and you’re drunk with endorphin. That’s what this book made me feel. So as a result I’m rounding up my 3.5 stars to 4 and getting out of here!
Special thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for sending me one of my favorite thriller author’s ARC in exchange my honest review.