REVIEW: Best Friends Forever by Margo Hunt @huntauthor @harlequinbooks
Best Friends Foreverby Margo Hunt
Mira Books
🔥 AVAILABLE 1/23/18 🔥
Thanks so much to Mira Books for this copy! A subtle psychological thriller that will have you turning the pages in one sit. Put this on your TBR immediately!
How well do you really know your best friend?
Kat Grant and Alice Campbell have a friendship forged in shared confidences and long lunches lubricated by expensive wine. Though they’re very different women—the artsy socialite and the struggling suburbanite—they’re each other’s rocks. But even rocks crumble under pressure. Like when Kat’s financier husband, Howard, plunges to his death from the second-floor balcony of their South Florida mansion.
Howard was a jerk, a drunk, a bully and, police say, a murder victim. The questions begin piling up. Like why Kat has suddenly gone dark: no calls, no texts and no chance her wealthy family will let Alice see her. Why investigators are looking so hard in Alice’s direction. Who stands to get hurt next. And who is the cool liar—the masterful manipulator behind it all.
Kat Grant and Alice Campbell have a friendship forged in shared confidences and long lunches lubricated by expensive wine. Though they’re very different women—the artsy socialite and the struggling suburbanite—they’re each other’s rocks. But even rocks crumble under pressure. Like when Kat’s financier husband, Howard, plunges to his death from the second-floor balcony of their South Florida mansion.
Howard was a jerk, a drunk, a bully and, police say, a murder victim. The questions begin piling up. Like why Kat has suddenly gone dark: no calls, no texts and no chance her wealthy family will let Alice see her. Why investigators are looking so hard in Alice’s direction. Who stands to get hurt next. And who is the cool liar—the masterful manipulator behind it all.
My Thoughts:
How far would you go for your best friend?
We all have our secrets, don't we?
Kat and Alice are about as opposite as you can get. At a chance encounter in an airport, they find they live close by and so their friendship begins. Three years they have become close and integrated into each other's lives. Then Kat's husband, an all around asshole, falls from their balcony to his death. Alice gets questioned by the police, arrested for his murder, and Kat has gone radio silent.
I opened this book up on my travels back home from the Thanksgiving holiday and could NOT put it down. This reads extremely fast and yet it is extremely subtle at the same time. I love that the POV is strictly through Alice's eyes so we get a full on feel of everything she is going through. Her marriage, which isn't perfect, her children, who aren't as well, her struggle in every day life that we can all empathize with, and now a newly formed friendship that was the missing piece she needed.
We start at the present when the police come to question Alice and then the author takes us to the past, where her friendship with Kat began. The author does an outstanding job of showing the mind of a sociopath as we travel back and forth from past to present. Manipulation, lies, setting the stage, selfishness, so on and so forth. Each chapter is a build up of what is to come. While the ending is a chilling portrayal of all the events leading up to it, it doesn't quite smack you in the face like some thrillers will do and may be slightly predictable for those who read a lot of psychological thrillers. However, the subtlety in how she builds the tension is something I truly loved about the book and it's impressive how she gets you there.
A psychological thriller debut done proper. I look forward to more from this author.
Great review, Chandra! I gotta check this one out.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Dennis! It's such an easy read!
Delete