BLURB:

THE PERFECT HUSBAND . . .

After a difficult pregnancy, Esther is grateful that her husband Robin offers to put his career on hold so that she can return to the job she loves.

But Esther finds leaving her daughter Riley behind more challenging than she’d thought. And soon the new imbalance in her relationship with Robin brings old tensions to the surface.

OR A PERFECT LIE?

Then one day Esther arrives home from work to find Robin and Riley are missing. As the police investigate their disappearance, it becomes clear that nothing about this modern-day family is what it seems…

Is Robin the perfect father everyone thinks he is? Or was it all a perfect lie?

MY THOUGHTS:

Thanks to NetGalley and Quercus Books for letting me read this book prior to its publication. My opinion is 100% honest, unbiased, and my own.

I was really looking forward to reading this novel, because I loved the author’s previous books. And even though I binge-read it in a couple of days, I felt a bit disappointed, both with the execution of the excellent premise and with the ending. It’s difficult to go into too much detail without giving up spoilers.

All the going back and forth in time, together with the different points of view, got me confused at times. We were getting snippets of information little by little to get the whole picture, but sometimes the details weren’t too clear, and some other details weren’t fully explained.

As for the characters, I couldn’t like them. Robin had way too many issues, and his way of dealing with some circumstances was shocking and disgusting. What can I say about Esther? Well, I wanted to slap her silly several times. So clever for some things and some gullible for others? It wasn’t very believable. I would have liked to see more development of the secondary characters, especially the one character that is instrumental for the story. I know, it looks like I’m speaking in riddles, but I told you it was difficult to write this review without revealing spoilers.

The ending was the most disappointing of all. I really dislike it when authors take the easy way out, and suddenly everything gets solved as if by magic. It feels lazy. Or like they didn’t really know how to end the story. When you concoct a complicated story, it’s easy to write yourself into a corner that makes you feel tempted to resolve everything in convenient ways. Way too convenient ways.

Anyhow, despite all that it was a page-turner and, with restrictions and curfews going on all over the world, just grab this book, a nice cup of tea (or a glass of wine), and curl up on the sofa

So, for all of that, I give this book… 3 TEA CUPS!