Once again Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen have delivered a psychological thriller that left me, until the very end, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Marissa and Matthew Bishop are the golden couple. It appears to the world that this couple has everything going for them.

Avery Chambers is a counselor who lost her license after she started using some maverick techniques in her counseling practice. Avery claims that if she cannot "fix" you in 10 sessions then she won't take you on as a client.

A friend of Marissa's recommends that she contact Avery for help. At their first appointment, Marissa springs on Matthew that she had an affair with a random guy from her gym but she wants to save their marriage.

It is a fast paced story from the beginning. I have been in sort of a reading rut. I have not been gravitating to reading and I was frustrated. I knew that Hendricks and Pekkanen would be able to get me out of my reading funk. I read this book in three days which isn't typically fast but for right now, it was.

Great on audio! Lots of twists, hard to put down. Another great read from this fabulous duo! I thought I'd guessed what was going on but...nope! It was impressive how everything tied together in the end. I definitely recommend this one, especially if you've loved their other books. If you haven't read their other books, you definitely should!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The Bishops seemed like any other couple dealing with the stresses of life and marriage when Marissa has an affair that changes everything. Avery, the therapist, has a very unconventional method of working through their issues.

This was a page-turner and I finished the story in a day. There were twists and turns and I did not want to put the book down until the story ended.

THE GOLDEN COUPLE
Authors: Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
Release date March 8, 2022
Publisher: St Martin Press

Avery is a family therapist who has unconventional methods of helping her clients but has a reputation of success.
In walks 2 new clients a couple named Mathew and Melissa looking for help for their marriage that is on the Brink of destruction.
Avery has 10 sessions she usually provides and starts with them and slowly unveils secrets that could help or destroy them more.
This is a heart racing page turner ! These two authors which I have read before have surpassed my high expectations of them. This was exciting and thrilling book.
I don't give 5 stars easily but this was masterfully written.

Hendricks and Pekannen have been on my radar for quite a while now but The Golden Couple was the first time I got to read their work. It was such an enjoyable and thrilling read and now I can't wait to get my hands on their previous books.

Avery Chambers is anything but a conventional therapist. Technically she doesn't have her license anymore. What she does have is a set of rules and a unique approach to working with her clients in exactly 10 sessions. Then a seemingly perfect couple, Marissa and Mathew Bishop walk into her office to deal with infidelity and what follows is a beautifully written, very engaging and entertaining psychological thriller that you won't be able to put down.

I am partial to psychological thrillers involving therapists and I loved the way unconventional approach to therapy was set up in this book. There were so many threads to follow, the pacing was perfect and I can absolutely see this book being turned into a movie (or a mini series). Absolutely recommend this to fans of the genre, as well as to those interested in dipping their toes in psych thriller waters.

A big thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for gifting me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This was the kind of read that keeps me excited about early review copies of books.

Marissa and Matthew Bishop seem to have it all - they have even been called "the golden couple"......until Marissa has an affair and wrecks everything that is. Now she wants to go to counseling to save her marriage, and she has chosen what she thinks is the perfect person for the job - Avery Chambers. Avery lost her professional license, but it hasn't stopped her from counseling those in crisis, though they have to adhere to her unorthodox methods. And the Bishops are desperate. When they glide through Avery’s door and Marissa reveals her infidelity, all three are set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it’s no longer simply a marriage that’s in danger.
I am a huge fan of this fabulous duo's books, and this one was one of their best, in my opinion. On just the first page, you learn that Avery lost her license five months ago, and later in the story you learn that it was one of her many unorthodox practices that led to her losing her license....not that she let that stop her. Avery also has a pharmaceutical company after her, after she did a supposedly anonymous whistleblower complaint about one of their drugs that was about to come onto the market that had dangerous side effects....something she found out from one of her clients. This company has been threatening and intimidating her, trying to find out who gave her the information, and they keep popping up throughout the book. Once Marissa confesses her infidelity to Matthew, their marriage is on the rocks and as they work the steps that Avery lays out, the person that Marissa had the affair with keeps reappearing. It all comes to a dramatic conclusion. This is definitely one that will keep you on the edge of your seat. I highly recommend it!

I could absolutely write a book about this book that is how much I loved it. I had read the Wife Between Us and so I really, really wanted to read this book. It did not disappoint! Avery is a therapist but had recently lost her license so she went out on her own. She had a very successful way of helping clients with her 10 step approach. She had Marissa and Matthew as a couple with the issue of infidelity. While she was helping them out she had issues of her own for turning a company in on a hotline for wrong doing. She had also recently lost her husband to cancer. There were so many different characters that it kept it interesting. Marissa had a chic boutique named Coco and she had hired Polly to help her out. Polly was a wannabe Marissa. Then there was Natalie who had been Matthew’s old acquaintance and she was a high end real estate agent that Marissa was jealous of, and Skip who was best friend to Marissa and Matthew. This book kept me on the edge of my seat but I couldn’t put it down. I strongly suggest you grab this book as soon as you can you will not be disappointed! It definitely gets the highest rating possible!

I received this ARC for free from Netgalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Wow, just wow! Best book I've read so far in 2022.

Avery is a consultant whose mantra is she can fix peoples' problems in ten sessions. Her methods are unconventional which is why she is a consultant instead of a licensed psychologist or therapist. There isn't a problem she cannot fix including the golden couple, Matthew and Marissa.

The literary duo of Hendricks and Pekkanen have created a plot web that will keep you guessing until the very end. This is a book that you simply will not be able to put down. Thank you NetGalley for an arc of this incredible book, I loved every second of it!

Psychological thrillers are such fun to read and try to figure out ahead of time. This one has plenty of possible suspects and motives so the guessing game lasted the whole novel. There is one standout character, the therapist, who deserves a follow up book of her own. Fun read.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC to read and review.

Marissa and Matthew, a married couple, have hit a huge snag in their relationship. Marissa seeks out professional counselling from Avery. Avery's counselling methods are not traditional. She becomes very involved in Marissa and Matthew's lives.

Throughout the book, it seems like everyone is guilty. As I read on, I had no idea what they were guilty of, they just seemed that they were. This is a very busy book, lots going on. It's like a “whodunnit” but it takes a long time to figure out what IT is.

The chapters alternated between Marissa and Avery. Oddly, Avery's chapters are in the first person. Marissa's are third person. If there is a specific reason for this, I do not know what it is. I just find it odd.

This is definitely a plot-driven book. I don't find any of the characters particularly likeable. It's the plot that kept this reader turning pages.

Then, there was the ending! I did not see that coming! At all!!! I love it when the twist at the end truly surprises me.

This was the right book for me, at the right time. I had just finished a heavy, emotional book and was suffering a book hangover. This is a great palette cleanser. It is easy to get into, fast-paced and keeps the reader guessing at every turn of the page. Very entertaining.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an Advance Readers Copy to me.

This author duo has written a twisty domestic suspense with an ending I didn’t see coming.

When Marissa cheats on her husband Matthew, she invites him to attend therapy with her to see if they can move past it. The therapist, Avery, has a proven method for getting people through things and it is this confidence that Marissa is looking for. Avery however, has had her license taken away from her after some less than professional actions she took with one of her clients. As the stages of their ten session therapy program progresses, the golden couple appear to be making strides. Avery is somewhat distracted by drama in her own life and her “proven methods” are very suspect. Will Avery be able to repair their relationship or is there even bigger trouble in paradise?

I really enjoyed this one and will be seeking out more by this author pair. I did not know what was going on for most of the book (in the best way). While the reader must suspend belief for the therapist’s techniques much like the character in some mystery novels who is a friend of the murder victim and doesn’t go to the police but rather solves the murder themselves, they will be rewarded with a juicy plot with lots of suspicious characters and scenes.

The pacing was perfect and I loved the setting of Washington, DC and wondered if any of the restaurants mentioned were real. The tension just kept notching higher and higher until everything is revealed in the last ten percent of the book. Most of the characters were very clear to me. I didn’t like any of them but that might also be because I didn’t trust any of them. Oh wait! I did love Romeo the rescue pitbull.

Thank you to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The Golden Couple publishes March 8, 2022!

The Golden Couple, by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen was yet another absolute hit for me. All of this duos’ books are five-star reads for me and this latest release was no different. The two authors know how to write a compelling novel that immediately draws you in and keeps your attention throughout.

Avery Bishop is a highly successful therapist who has lost her license to practice, but successfully carries on anyway with her unorthodox methods. She claims she can fix any couple in 10 sessions, and then begins to infiltrate every area of their lives in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the people she’s helping and to achieve her goals.

Marissa loves her husband, Mathew, and their son, Bennet, and they seem to be the perfect, “golden” couple until Marissa lures Mathew into therapy on a pretense, and reveals an infidelity. After his initial burst of anger, Mathew seems eager to forgive and move forward, perhaps a bit too accommodating, and things look hopeful. After a few smooth and successful sessions, complications occur and the situation quickly morphs into something much more complex, heavy laden with secrets.

This is a multi-faceted, interesting story, full of twists and turns, but always easy to follow. There are many psychological layers unraveled and red herrings mixed in. It’s shocking, but also plausible, and far more emotional than I anticipated.

The Golden Couple is a thrilling ride and highly entertaining. I was wholly satisfied with the conclusion, but also sad to see it end.

Thriller psychologically Tense page turner. A couple, unfaithfulness, Counselor, you won’t see the ending coming

WOW! The Golden Couple by Hendricks and Pekkanen is just wow!! I devoured this book!!! Married couple Marissa and Matthew go to Avery for couple's counseling after one of them is unfaithful and they want to repair the damage. Sounds pretty straightforward but this story is everything but! Everyone's telling lies, everyone's keeping secrets and nothing is as it seems. Great characters, terrific story line and an ending you won't see coming!

This domestic thriller follows ex-therapist Avery and her newest clients Marissa and Matthew Bishop. Avery has developed a 10 session therapy technique that is as successful as it is controversial. Marissa contacts Avery in an attempt to save her marriage after cheating on her husband. From the first visit, Avery is intrigued by the Instagram-perfect couple that she suspects has more secrets under the surface than just the infidelity. As the group starts to work through Avery's 10 steps, those secrets begin to be revealed and soon it becomes obvious that there's more in danger than just the Bishop's marriage.

TW/CW: infidelity, suicide, stalking

The premise of this story did exactly what it should - draw me in from the very beginning. We jump right into the book as Avery is meeting the Bishops for the first time so when Marissa drops the cheating bombshell the reader is just as surprised as the characters. I pretty much always prefer my thrillers to get to the juicy details quickly, but even more so with domestic thrillers. Domestic thrillers aren't my go-to subgenre so anytime they can immediately grab my interest, I really take notice. I also loved the way we quickly got the rough sketch of the characters during this visit to give the reader some foundation and then the characters get built up from there. The main 'thriller' aspect of the book isn't introduced until later, but this juicy hook of a cheating wife and the 'maverick therapist' was a much more enticing beginning to the story.

I absolutely loved the characters of Avery and Marissa because I love a good unlikable protagonist. I also loved how these characters were unlikable in very different ways. Avery is very blunt in typical therapist fashion but she also has such an air of superiority that she can be a bit off-putting. Her 10 step method is very invasive to her client's lives and she doesn't tell them upfront about this so she's constantly pushing boundaries but then saying it is part of the process. Marissa, on the other hand, is more of your typical PTA mom type who seems to be all smiles and polish on the outside but who has thinly-veiled rivalries with the other PTA moms. She is sickly sweet to the point of being annoying and sometimes all you want to do is shake her and tell her to just say what she really wants to say. On the surface, it may seem like the two women are like water and oil, but they work really well together in this story. Their character conflicts do drive some of the tension and momentum in the story, but their differences also give the story some really good balance and texture. I'm not sure how Hendricks and Pekkanen divide up their novels, but the two characters do have distinct voices which I always appreciate in a dual POV story.

The dual POV choice worked really well in this story to give us both sides of the therapy. We see Avery researching and digging into the Bishop's lives but we also see how the Bishops are living their lives and trying to follow Avery's guidance. I also think the POV choices made this domestic thriller feel a little less domestic-y. The whole point of domestic thrillers is that the thrilling aspects are, usually, coming from inside the house. There's some sort of betrayal or crime or secret that amps up the tension in the existing relationship (usually husband/wife dynamic). In this case, we do have that betrayal that causes tension in the relationship but instead of just following Marissa as she tries to save her marriage, we have the extra POV of Avery who gives us some interesting insights into the Bishops. Avery's POV is a nice mix of being an outsider to the relationship but also a bit of an insider since she is actively working with the Bishops and, at times, knows something that one of the Bishops don't. Avery does have some interesting things going on in her own life that add to the overall tension and some thrilling moments in the story, but I really felt like her character was more of a way to give the reader some extra insight into what would have been a pretty ordinary domestic thriller plot.

I did find the tension to be a bit uneven. There were so many moving parts and different plot threads and I could tell Hendricks/Pekkanen wanted to amp up the tension in X plot or Y plot. But when there are so many plot threads, it is hard to make each of them feel that gentle ramp up of tension. Instead, what we got was a lot of stair-step feeling tension where we got a significant jump in tension but then it would plateau while we followed other plot threads. There were times where I would forget about whole plot threads or threats simply because they hadn't been addressed in a while (and even the characters felt like they forgot about them).

This is the first book by Hendricks and Pekkanen that I've read mostly because I don't reach for a lot of domestic thrillers but also because I've heard that the books by this author duo have a hard time sticking the landing. The ending, in this book, worked okay but I did feel like it ended up being a bit more simplistic and boring than I was expecting. There was some really great tension building in this story from a number of different plot threads that we know will converge at some point. And, granted, these plot threads to converge but just in the most lackluster way possible. For me, the majority of the book was a little over the top in the best way. A maverick therapist who lost her license due to this 10 step process she developed? Sounds great. A plot thread about a corporate whistle-blower complete with the corporation hiring goons to stalk the character involved? Fantastic. So I was expecting some sort of bigger, more surprising ending that maybe took those elements and heightened them all. But, instead, I felt that the ending took a few steps back into 'safe' territory. It almost felt like those other, more exciting plot threads were a smoke screen for the very normal domestic thriller core of the story. And I wanted those other threads to be used to elevate the domestic thriller elements, not just act as a smoke screen for them.

Overall, I really enjoyed the premise and characters. I was fully engaged and interested in the story up until the ending, which I found pretty lackluster. That being said, I do think Avery's 10 session program has excellent series potential.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC
Expected publication date is March 8, 2022

I was a little reluctant to read this one, because I wasn't crazy about the authors' previous books. But then one weekend, I was looking for something that was just easy entertainment and grabbed this. While it does fit the bill, and I liked the idea of the somewhat uncouth therapist, the couple in question was just so boring! Nothing golden about them. The plot was pretty predictable and I saw the twists a mile away. That being said, the authors have a fluid writing style that made this a quick read. Overall, it was more or less what I wanted in the moment, but I do think it will fade quickly in my memory and meld with many other so-so novels of the genre, I'm afraid. I'm glad so many readers feel otherwise, though, and got a lot more satisfying entertainment from The Golden Couple than I did!

Hendricks and Pekkanen have written a taut thriller with numerous storylines that all pay off beautifully in the end. Looking forward to more from this duo!

Wow! My first book by these authors and I can't wait to read more. This highly engaging psychological thriller kept me turning the pages and guessing at the next reveal! I enjoyed seeing the layers exposed and how the character's lives intertwined.

Avery may have lost her therapists' license for some unsavory maneuvers, but this doesn't stop her from continuing her practice under a new title and taking on new patients, promising them a bit of a cure all in just ten sessions. She may or may not be the target of multiple prior patients, among others she has crossed. The woman has boundless energy, but always seems to be looking over her shoulder. She also has a recently deceased husband, who was a good bit older than her, a grown stepdaughter, and maybe adds a rescue pup to the mix.

The Bishops are her newest clients. Outwardly, they appear to have it all - looks, success, money. A "Golden Couple" if you will. Marissa convinces Matthew to join her in the counseling, leading him to believe it has something to do with their son. The first of many lies and secrets that will be uncovered!

Many twists and turns and I was often guessing what was happening, only to be wrong (which I LOVE by the way!).

I switched between the ebook and the audio and could not wait to finish this twisty story of lies, secrets and betrayal. This author duo is quickly becoming a favorite!

A big thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press and MacMillan Audio for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Marissa and Matthew, "The Golden Couple", seem to have everything: a happy marriage, a picture perfect family, dream jobs, a luxurious home, and nice cars. Over the years, this golden couple has lost its luster and they hire renegade therapist Avery to save their failed marriage after Marissa confesses to cheating on Matthew. Marissa's infidelity destroys their already frail, distant relationship and Marissa contacts Avery in desperation. This begins the deep-dive into Avery, Marissa, and Matthew's past. Everyone has secrets and lies that they are keeping from each other. 

The story is told in alternating perspectives of Marissa and Avery. The therapist Avery's side was compelling as a rogue therapist, and her backstory showed her human side as a wife and an animal lover. Therapists can be a bit clinical, so this other perspective was appreciated. However, Avery gets a little bit too much into her patients lives and her rogue techniques were invasive and fa bit creepy.

This book is a slow burn with a nice, even pace. I got wrapped up in the story and the characters although none were very likeable (except the dog Romeo). The ending was not what I was expecting, so the element of surprise was a positive spin.