This story starts with Deborah and then progresses.

It’s quite a slow book to read with lots going on.

quite a complicated psychological thriller. I wasn’t over keen on the characters but the story was interesting.

Sibley has been sent to rehab for her drinking but, rather unwisely, she decides to go home to try to reconcile with her mother Deborah. It's a toss up as to which of these women has more secrets (well, to be honest, it's not- it's Deborah) and who is telling what truth they can. I know that sounds confusing but parts of this are confusing, Something happened 16 years ago to precipitate their estrangement and, as you can guess, they both have their own version, I didn't especially like either woman but I appreciated how Montgomery built her story. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC.

For such an intricate plot, I was amazed that I was able to follow along so easily. Marin Montgomery is a great writer. I would definitely read more from her.

So now I have to go and read all the other books by this author! It is a good thing and a bad thing when you enjoy a book only to find it is one of many. Good because you get to enjoy more by the same author but bad because you miss the continuity which reading in order can bring. The good outweighs the bad! This is well written and dark but engaging story. All too credible, the relationship between mother and daughter is symbiotic and often toxic. This was well done and the author reminds us constantly that things are rarely what they seem.

⭐️⭐️💫/5

This book starts by giving us a glimpse into the life of Deborah, a widow who is attacked outside her home on a freezing cold winter night. Interesting premise... but then we meet Sibley. Sibley is a thirty-something lawyer and a functioning alcoholic. Caught in a scandal by her job and her husband, she’s shipped off to rehab to work on herself and her addiction.

I felt so-so about Sibley until she snaps at her husband for sending her to rehab after a drunk driving accident, then I really started to hate her. And at this point in the book I realized she’s planning something shady...

The verdict: The beginning was good, the end was okay, the middle was a wild mess.

The Imposter is told from multiple perspectives. The story starts with Deborah. Deborah is home and gets a mysterious letter from someone who seems to know something about events that happened in her past. She is later attacked by an unknown assailant and ends up in the hospital for a while. Since she has been through a lot of trauma, decides to go to therapy after her new significant other recommends it. A few chapters in, it switches over to Sibley. Sibley is an up and coming attorney at a law firm. She is quickly thrown a curveball as a result of her struggles with alcohol consumption and other factors leading to her being put on leave from the law firm. Unbeknownst to her, her concerned husband got with her employer to arrange getting her the help she needs in order to return to work. She takes a detour on the way to rehab and goes home to visit her estranged mother Deborah to set things right, in hopes that will help her succeed in rehab. Once Sibley gets into town, she is confronted with a few things from her own past and uncovers secrets from her mother’s past that also affect her.

While this book had a slow build, it was unpredictable and I kept trying to figure out where the title would come into play. Overall I enjoyed the whole book. I found Sibley’s perspective the most entertaining. Deborah would make me flip between feeling bad for her and thinking she had really gone bonkers. The supporting characters were entertaining and added to the story well. Thank you Marin Montgomery and Netgalley for the chance to read/review!

I love the cover for this book. Unfortunately that’s about all I loved. Something about the writing style I didn’t like? It was also a bit slow moving.

This was a good psychological thriller featuring an estranged mother and daughter. Told through both Deborah and Sibley’s POV it definitely kept you guessing. I enjoyed Sibley’s POV a little bit more as Deborah’s was confusing at times, but as I read further I understood why it was written the way it was.They both had problems they were dealing with so I kept going back and forth on whose events I believed more and that is what kept me reading. The first half was a little slow but it set up the second half of the book nicely after multiple twists were revealed in a short amount of time. Certain parts really got my heart pumping and made me not want to be home alone, but yet I couldn't stop reading. I liked how everything was explained/wrapped up in the end. Will definitely read more by this author.

Thank you to Marin Montgomery and Netgalley for the gifted copy.

This book is very different in the way it is written. I enjoyed all of the many unexpected twists and believe me there are many. I also like the past and present narration of events. However I could not connect to either mother of daughter. There wasn't anything likable about these untrustworthy women. I did enjoy the fact that I was unable to figure out what was coming next right up to the very end. This stop has a great plot and I would like to read more by this author. I highly recommend.

Thanks to Net Galley for allowing me to read this amazing arc for my honest review.

The Imposter features the mother/daughter duo Deborah and Sibley who both have their own demons that they are fighting.

Neither are likeable or trustworthy but there is something about these 2 that keeps you reading to see what their story actually is.

Deborah lives on the family farm is hiding a secret about the death of her abusive husband.

Sibley is an alcoholic, sent on leave from her law firm to get help but in all her wisdom, Sibley ends up at the family farm where she realizes her Mum is not well .

Is she trying to kill her Sibley wonders.

The book draws you in slowly, you empathize with both ladies and the twists and turns keep those pages turning.

Thanks to NetGalley, Thomas & Mercer for an intriguing read.

The Imposter was a page-turning thriller! Such a unique plot and so many great twists that I never saw coming.

Eerily mysterious. This is one of those 'Everything Is Not What it Seems' type of book. No one can be trusted. ⁣
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Divided into 3 parts, the first is all about Deborah, giving an insight into her life. She's fragile, lonely, living on a farm. It seems something is bothering her quite a lot and recently, there have been invasions in the area including her house. The most shocking thing is how someone has been sending her mails claiming to be her dead daughter. ⁣
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The second part is about Sibley. Now we don't know who Sibley really is. All we can understand is that she's a lawyer, about to get kicked out of her job, an alcoholic and is in a marriage crises with Holden, her husband. Towards the end of the second part, she decides to visit her mom, unknown to Holden who thinks she's at a rehab. ⁣
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Personally, the book has a slow start. Deborah's POV was quite lame, boring at times. I found it very hard to continue reading. ⁣
The most intriguing part is the third. A mixture of both Deborah and Sibley's POV. My most interesting part 😃 ⁣
We see the two MCs close up, each with her own thoughts and ideas. ⁣
After Sibley returns home to her mother, things take a different turn. Deborah starts seeing and hearing things all the while, Sibley's uncovering dark secrets of the past.⁣
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From the beginning i doubted both of them. They hide things from their own selves. Sibley's thinking her mom is deranged and Deborah thinking Sibley's not who she says she is but An Imposter. Who is telling the truth?⁣
The descriptions went haywire at times, and the switch between the two characters seemed a bit too much. Other than that, the book has a great plot, with emotionally driven characters.⁣

This is a story of estrangement, twists and turns, and preconceived notions. It kept me on my toes trying to figure out what the truth was. And I didn’t want to stop reading until my questions were answered. Marin Montgomery, author of What We Forgot to Bury, delivered a page-turning psychological book.

When Sibley Bradford, a lawyer, is forced by her law firm to get her drinking under control, they give her time off to enter a rehab program. Sibley acts like she is heading to the rehab program, but instead drives to her hometown to see if reconciling with her mother might not be the start to fixing her problems.

But what Sibley discovers in her hometown causes her to question everything. Including the reason she raced away in the first place. But with her drinking, and her mother Deborah’s apparent health problems, it becomes hard to know what is factual and what is fiction.

This fast-moving story is told in different chapters by both Deborah and Sibley. Each shares their memories and truths. And the whole time I kept wondering who was the most credible. Sibley wasn’t making any attempt to slow down on her alcohol consumption, and Deborah was mentally unstable.

Concerns
Though the characters almost worked for me, some of their decisions felt ridiculous. That, or they just existed in such dysfunctional families that they didn’t know how or care to make things better. No doubt this seems vague, but I don’t want to spoil anything.

Though I’ve said the booked moved quickly, I believe that to be so because I was searching for answers, which felt very slow in coming.

Conclusion
While I had no trouble being interested and wanting to know more, it did feel somewhat slow and unclear at times. And for me, the ending was pretty out there which didn’t do anything to bolster my feelings for the book as a whole..

However, Montgomery did a good job of bringing the setting in this story to life, and I could easily imagine what things looked like.

I think this is one of those books that you love or you just think it’s okay. If you haven’t read What We Forgot to Bury, Montgomery’s last book, I highly recommend it!

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this ARC and the ability to freely post my opinion.

3 🌟 The imposter by Marin Montgomery started well and ended well but I found it a bit slow and a bit confusing at times in the middle. Sibley is a divorce lawyer with an alcohol problem whose job and marriage are on the rocks. She reunites with her estranged mum to try and uncover the truth about her fathers death. Unfortunately neither of the main characters are terrible likeable which is always a challenge for me. Overall I did I enjoy it and it came together well at the end. As always thanks to for the advance copy and my first read of Marin Montgomery

I am afraid I struggled with this book. I found the pace to be very slow, and I didn't like the characters. I have found that I don't have to like the characters to still be able to enjoy the book. But it didn't work for me in this case. .

A very dark, shocking read.

I felt like from the very beginning to the end I was tense and anxious. It was overall very suspenseful. The pacing was just right and the story keeps sucking you back in.

I don't feel like this was very unique or something I've never read before, therefore, I can't give it 5 stars.

This book started out slow for me, but with each new chapter, I was sucked into the chaos that surrounds this mother & daughter. Combining flawed humans, drug abuse (both consciously and unconsciously), and the inability to trust one's choices, this book creates a perfect situation for manipulation, revenge, and murderous tendencies to fester. What lengths will people go to when they feel they haven't gotten what they deserve in life? Lives are lost & lives are ruined in this book, but I couldn't put it down because I just wanted to know what happens next.

Sibley has a husband and a great job as an attorney but life around her begins to break down as her life is being taken over by her need of alcohol.

In order to save her job and marriage she agrees to go to a rehabilation spa, however she believes that delving into her past for answers of her dark past is where her rehabilitation needs to begin.

The start of her journey begins at her mothers house, a place she hasn’t been since the death of her father when she was in high school.

The story of her past is the stuff of nightmares and old lies truly begin to haunt not just sibley but her mother too.
When will the lies end, who can be trusted and who will pay the price in the end.

A riveting read and an ending that will leave you shocked beyond words.

The aspects I liked about this book was that the plot and story were full of suspense, and no parts of this book dropped or ever felt boring. Montgomery does a wonderful job keeping the story going from start to finish. Yet the pacing reminded me of watching a TV drama or something similar. The writing, for being super cheesy, was communicated well. And the plot was carried through the main two character’s inner struggles. The author I can best compare her to is Shari Lapena. But the aspects I was not a fan of was that the characters felt unreliable, and frankly I was tired of some of the side characters pretty quick. Without giving too much away, the main two characters were not trustworthy to the reader at any point in the book. Maybe that was partially the point, but there was hardly any direction toward the truth besides of course how the book rounded out in the end. The ending seemed to fall together without much of a clever set-up, and relied completely on the suspense. Plus I found a few parts of the plot and character’s engagements with each other to be far stretched and choppy. But for how messy it all seemed at times, this book had an interesting dialogue about relationships and second chances.

Regardless, this book was definitely entertaining and engaging. The story was, quite literally, entirely growing suspense from start to finish. Why should you read this book? If you enjoy suspense thrillers centering on estranged familial relationships and reading about two women seemingly going insane under the same roof, this is the book for you. This is a book I will not be forgetting any time soon.

3 for neutral. Unfortunately, I had to sit this one down, after trying to get through it on a few occasions. It just was too slow paced for me. Will update if able to finish at a later date.