Unable to shake the tragic circumstances that caused her to flee her rural Midwestern hometown, Sibley wants nothing more than to reunite with her estranged mother, Deborah, and bury their past tensions.

This book felt like other books I have read. Nothing new here.

Thank you Netgalley for the opportunity to preview The Imposter by Marin Montgomery. I think i will describe this novel as a family tradgedy. The plot centers on a mother and daughter and provides the reader with some information, but not all of it so it leaves you wanting to know more of the background and history of the two.
There's some tough subject matter, the book starts out a bit slow, and the characters are not too likeable.
3 stars - twisty turns till the end.

The description for The Imposter by Marin Montgomery immediately caught my attention. I love a good mystery and this one did not disappoint. First you read the story of Deborah who lives alone on a farm and is the victim of a violent attack outside her home. The second part of the book focuses on Sibley who is a lawyer dealing with substance abuse issues and is asked to take a leave of absence from her job to get help. While reading these two stories you are not told how they are connected and I certainly didn't put it together on my own. Part three you learn that Sibley is Deborah's estranged daughter and instead of going to rehab Sibley heads to her mother's in hopes to resolve past conflict so she can move on with her life. Her father had died under suspicious circumstances leaving Sibley to question things for many years.

I really enjoyed this book! The third part of the book switches back and forth from Deborah to Sibley's POV. I had a feeling we were dealing with two unreliable narrators but I couldn't figure it out! I was guessing up until the end and really liked the way it was all tied up in the end. It was my first time reading Marin Montgomery but I definitely plan to look into her other books!

The Imposter starts off a bit slow, then takes off at full tilt, full of twists and turns, sometimes confusing, sometimes not. Completely unlikeable characters, which isn't a bad thing to me. Good writing and I'd love to read more from this author!

The Imposter by Marin Montgomery is a twisty and confusing psychological thriller. Neither of the main characters are at all likeable and the story jumped all over the place. A divorce lawyer with a serious drinking problem and her estranged mother reunite and try to uncover the family secrets and lies.

Thanks to Thomas and Mercer for my copy of this book to read

This book was just full of twists from start to finish. Mother Deborah, and daughter, Sibley, had been estranged for a number of years. Sibley is a functioning alcholic divorce lawyer who has an affair with one of her clients. Her firm and husband find out. She is to go to rehab, or lose everything. Instead, Sibley decides it's time to go and see her mother, Deborah, which she believes has the answers to all of her problems. Deborah, is a having her own crisis. Both women have to come to terms with their past, inorder to get on with their future. This was an interesting story. Once some of the secrets came out, things really started to make sense. Each woman had to earn the others trust. Some unknown force was out to destroy them both. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this book. 3.5 out of 5.

First I want to thank the author for allowing me to read this before it’s release. This is the first advanced copy I’ve been invited to read. This book is about a mother daughter estranged situation with a complicated and deadly backstory. The whole time I was reading it I was trying to figure out what was going on and what the ending would be. It’s a psychological thriller that kept me reading. Look for this in stores March 2021!

From the outside looking in, Sibley Sawyer has a perfect life. As a successful attorney, she’s worked hard to get to the top of her game—but when her personal and professional lives implode, Sibley looks for a way to turn the page.
Unable to shake the tragic circumstances that caused her to flee her rural Midwestern hometown, Sibley wants nothing more than to reunite with her estranged mother, Deborah, and bury their past tensions.But as she reenters the life she left behind, she realizes her mother isn’t the same person she remembers, and she’s not the same daughter either. As both women struggle to piece together a tangled web of deceit and lies, and the shocking circumstances that caused Sibley to leave in the first place, it becomes clear there are secrets rooted deeper than either mother or daughter could ever have imagined.
Can you really deceive your past and those around you?

This book has a few TW so approach only if you are in a great headspace. I loved alternate POVs and the books was overall okay. Not knock my socks off but would recommend to others. Especially impactful for those of us with strained relationships with our mother. It’s hard to understand what goes through someone else’s mind when they are making decisions.

Written in two POV- barely functional alcoholic Sibley and her estranged mother Deborah.

Sibley is a successful attorney and her life seems to be doing well overall, but things are beginning to take a turn for the worse around her. She returns to her old life in her hometown which she has avoided since one tragic night years ago.

It leaves you questioning everything and everyone. It even becomes clear the two narrators are unreliable in their perception. A great twisty psychological thriller that I didn’t guess the ending to (a rare occurrence these days).

The story held my interest throughout with interesting, disturbed and engaging characters, the appropriate amount of description and the right amount of suspense.
I must admit I found a tiny part of it confusing towards the end and had to go back to reread a part but that may have been due to me reading it so quick to find out the ending.

Overall, I would definitely recommend to anyone who enjoys a good psychological thriller that keeps you guessing until the very end. I enjoyed the style in which this story was written and will be seeking out more books written by Marin in the future.

I thought this book was confusing and it just wasn't for me. So much information, which is fine, but it was just so confusing. The ending was fine, but not enough to save this book for me.

This book follows Sibley and her mother Deborah. We begin the book with Deborahs perspective, and we kind of know right away that she going to be an unreliable narrator. Then we switch to Sibley just as her world starts falling apart. She is being accused of having a dating profile up by her husband, and her law office seems to thinking that she was having an affair with one of her clients.. Added to the fact that she seems to be an alcoholic and her husband and the people she works for decided to send her off to rehab. Instead of going she decides that she needs to go see her mom who she hasn't seen in like 10 plus years..

As soon as they come together in the same house even more weirdness starts.. Both Deborah and Sibley seem to be blacking out, Deborah especially seems to be spiraling and getting worse every day.. Now Sibley is trying to overcome her own issues, figure out why her mom acting super bizarre, and shes trying to learn some dark secrets from both her and her mothers past.

For most of this book, I was pretty confused as to what was actually supposed to be going on.. but at about maybe 70% or so things definitely started to become clearer.. Even with being confused I couldn't put it down.. I just had to see what the ending was going to be..

There were some unexpected twists, that had me saying wtf? and while I did peg who was behind it all I was wrong about the motives..

This was a quick read for me. I’m always interested in books that center on family tensions, and this one took us down quite a path! I think you will enjoy it if you like characters you can’t rely on, if you want to be guessing at who you can trust and if you want to be surprised. This story is told by the perspectives of Sibley and also Deborah.

Check it out:

From the outside looking in, Sibley Sawyer has a perfect life. As a successful attorney, she’s worked hard to get to the top of her game—but when her personal and professional lives implode, Sibley looks for a way to turn the page.

Unable to shake the tragic circumstances that caused her to flee her rural Midwestern hometown, Sibley wants nothing more than to reunite with her estranged mother, Deborah, and bury their past tensions.

But as she reenters the life she left behind, she realizes her mother isn’t the same person she remembers, and she’s not the same daughter either.

As both women struggle to piece together a tangled web of deceit and lies, and the shocking circumstances that caused Sibley to leave in the first place, it becomes clear there are secrets rooted deeper than either mother or daughter could ever have imagined.

Can you really deceive your past and those around you?

This book will be out on March 9!

The Imposter is a psychological thriller that focuses on a mother and daughter that have been estranged for many years. Only when the daughter is being forced into rehab by her husband and work does she return to where she grew up to seek answers to her past. She hopes in getting closure to her past that she will get to continue and move on with her future.

The beginning of the book starts out a little slowly in Deborah's POV. She's a woman (the mother in this case) that is seeking out help in her local town. I don't know what it was about the beginning, but I just wasn't connecting to Deborah. Perhaps it was because her parts were told in third person? I can't pinpoint it, but I felt distanced from her.
After we are introduced to Deborah in the small town in the midwest, we meet Sibley in Arizona. She is the daughter of Deborah and a high profile, successful lawyer that seems to have a drinking problem. She appears to have a lot going on, but she brings it all back to alcohol. While I didn't love Sibley, her character had a lot more promise to me. Her parts were told in first person, but both of them were so unreliable because of whatever issues they faced. It was hard to pull for either of them, but at least with Sibley, I felt something towards her.

Their stories are told separately at first because their are in different places, but once they come to the same farmhouse in the midwest, we get their stories together. They both have different memories and different ways to cope with what is happening around them, but we are getting snippets of what makes these characters tick.

This is a story of two women trying to figure out how their pasts line up to the futures and it is a twisted tale of lies and schemes and delusions. But what is real and what is not? Two unreliable characters due to alcohol and medication. Who can you believe? What is the real story here??

"Sometimes, what we forget is more important than what we remember."

I was excited to receive The Imposter by Marin Montgomery since she is a "new to me author". I liked the pacing of the story after getting the two women together in one place, although Sibley's introduction was pretty exciting. I don't think I ever connected to Deborah, but Sibley had potential. She was just so darn unreliable and I hope she wasn't endangering those around her by her mistakes. The story itself was good, but not great. I honestly cannot pinpoint what was not so great other than I really disliked most of the character's other than Sibley's friends and husband. Everyone she grew up with seemed like they had an ulterior motive. Small towns aren't always what they are cracked up to be.

Overall this would be a 3.5 star. Plot was good, characters unlikable, and the pacing was pretty smooth.

The novel opens during a Midwest winter, and I immediately related to the author’s sentiments regarding the seasons. Part one focuses on a widowed mother, Deborah, living alone on her family’s farmland. The novel moves between the points of view of Deborah and her daughter, Sibley. Part two focuses on Sibley, a 34-yr-old attorney, and the pace picks up with her storyline. By part three, I had many questions as a reader, and I was eager to figure out the answers. The last quarter of the book was the most engaging, as the characters and the reader gain clarity and the page-turning pace increases.

Overall, I was engaged in the novel and appreciated the suspense and tying up of loose ends in the second half. At times, I found the excessive similes and cliché expressions distracting, as they interrupted the flow of the writing. Regarding the characters, Sibley is rather unlikable at first, but she grew on me, so I encourage readers to give her a chance.

⚠⚠⚠ Trigger Warnings ⚠⚠⚠ -- both play major roles in the story:
Alcoholism and loss of an infant

The Imposter follows mother, Deborah, and daughter, Sibley who are reunited after not seeing each other for years. With secrets from the past creeping into the present and two women weary of each other with more questions than answers? You have a suspenseful cocktail.

What could have been better?
While, I expected some disjointed storytelling and writing due to two unreliable narrators, it felt more disjointed than necessary and made it hard to get into. Going on, I felt like the story lacked character development or just any character to feel connected to. Then, there was the pacing...the beginning of the story lagged and I thought the end was rushed to a close.

What I did like?
There were twists that surprised me, and times I felt like I was at the edge of my seat. The unreliable narrators did help with some of the suspense and the twists that occur, and the relationships between the characters in the small town were illustrated well.

Thank you #netgalley for this arc for an honest review. This book will be published March 9th.

Sibley and her mother Deborah have been estranged for years, ever since the tragic event that made Sibley leave.
But as Sibley's life starts unravelling, she decides to reunite with her mother and put their past behind them.

This was a good read, but one that I had trouble rating.
The story didn't instantly grip me; I found the opening chapters following Deborah in the 3rd person impersonal and cold, and I struggled to get into it.
When the perspective switched to Sibley's first-person narrative, my interest was piqued, but even though I enjoyed Sibley's chapters more, still, the story took some time to get going.
The plot became confusing as I read along, and that didn't make for an easy read. Therefore even though the story came together at the end and I appreciate how well-plotted the novel was, I just couldn't give it more than 3 stars.

The Imposter is a story about an estranged relationship between Sibley and her mother and the chaos that their lives seem to spiral into. Sibley is a high-profile divorce attorney that finds herself in a bit of bad press and marital woes. She ends up back in her small town to try and reconcile with her estranged mother and events become very strange as she pieces memories and current situations together to make sense of it all.

I went into this book enticed by the premise of the book and enjoyed the writing style and building of characters, however, what seemed to deter me a bit was how slow the chapters seemed to progress. I found myself skimming ahead to look for finer details and for the story to move more rapidly. I will say that I was not expecting who would be the protagonist at the end of the story for well into about half of the book. Typically it is much faster... so kudos to Marin Montgomery! It was definitely an interesting tale of what we leave behind and what our families try to hide in our pasts and how we uncover those truths in the end. If you like mystery/thrillers, you are sure to enjoy this book.

I really liked this. The first few pages I wasn’t sure about it but I got sucked in soon after my doubts.
There are twists upon twists. I’m trying hard to not post any spoilers but it’s hard. I had no idea what was going on until the end, my predictions through out the book were wrong. Very unexpected and the obvious conclusion I came to was very incorrect. I enjoy that in a suspense/thriller. The ending cleared everything up and tied it up neatly which I really love. I love when all of my questions are answered.
The mother/daughter relationship was painfully strained but realistic after years of estrangement. The characters were real, not perfect heroes. Sibley’s alcoholism was an interesting theme that added to the plot.

I enjoyed this book so much! This book is a psychological thriller with a bunch of twists. Each chapter alternates between Sibley and Deborah told from their perspective of what really happened. It was very interesting to see just how different they saw the same events happen. I also really was not expecting the ending and loved how it turned out.

I found this story to be very convoluted and confusing during the first half. Much information, happenings, and characters are thrown at readers and I found it difficult to sort it out. I also didn’t like any of the characters. I couldn’t discern whether Deborah was in dementia, drug hallucinations, or something else. Sibley wasn’t much better with her drinking and foggy memory. There was clarification at the end, but I didn’t care for the book.