This book was everything a psychological thriller should be!! I loved it and could not put it down! 5 stars!!!!

I would like to thank Karen King for writing a superb and riveting psychological book. It had me gripped from page 1 and I could see all the scenarios play out, BUT never saw the ending coming the way it did.

I will be looking out for Karen King books in the future.

Loved this book!! The story and the characters were amazing and so well done. I was fully immersed in the book and did not want it to end.

This book has a gripping plot and is fast paced. There are multiple twists and turns. The characters are fantastically written. The ending was a bit predictable.

A high-octane narrative packed with unexpected revelations, this thriller will have you racing through its pages to uncover the truth. I adored it and can’t wait for more!!

Full of tension and suspense but the fact that the characters met and married in such a short time frame made it feel slightly unrealistic. That said, it's a good domestic thriller that kept me hooked.

Honestly, I wanted to love this one because wicked MIL's are my favorite trope in a thriller. However, the writing was just not there. The writing seemed a bit juvenile and undeveloped. There were so many instances where the main character would be talking in present tense but then the last line of the chapter would be in future tense as if she knew what happened next. It made no sense. There was way too much foreshadowing so the twist was given away way too early. I liked all of the storylines but thought the way they were written was shallow and surface level and far too predictable. This was an easy read but I am disappointed with how predictable it was. Thank you to NetGalley and the author for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Really good story and mainly well written. It was very intense from the start. It did get very repetitive in the middle which grated after a while but it improved again. I guessed who the perpetrator was early on, although I had my doubts a few times. This is the first time in all my adult life that I've read a book in a day. Would recommend

This had potential to be a good book but to be honest it just didn't meet my expectations. It was too short and I couldn't get invested in the story, which I think was mainly because Sam and Dana met and got married in the span of six months which was so unbelievable.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for the arc

The stuff of nightmares.....how do you know when a Mummy's boy is a recipe for disaster??!! This Motherinlaw in this book is so creepy and wretched. But there are other factors at play to deter the marriage from happening. I really enjoyed this book!!

A real who is doing what to who. Enjoyed it. Not as good as "the stranger in my bed certainly a real page turner as the last chapters approached.

I enjoyed every second of this book. First time reading from this author, and it will not be my last. Definitely add this book to your to be read list. I recommend this book to my friends and family.

"He loves you now. He loved her first"

..

Karen King is a new to me author, who seems equally as adept and confident when writing contemporary romantic fiction, as she is when upping the ante with a heart-stopping psychological mystery. This is the first book I have read from her extensive catalogue, however, I have no doubt that it will not be the last.

So, meet Dana...

..

Out of work and away from a bad relationship, Dana is on the interview trail. On a particularly windy and chilly January day, she has just come from an accountancy firm, almost hoping that she doesn't get offered the job, when a flyaway hat looks set to distract her. When she sees the wearer of the offending headgear, it wouldn't really have mattered what had happened in the last couple of hours, as with one look, she is bitten by the instant attraction bug. It seems as though the owner of the stray trilby, Sam, feels the same way about Dana and they are soon planning their whirlwind wedding day for June of the same year.

Dana comes from a very troubled, working class background, her parents having died when she was very young. She was raised by an aunt and uncle who never really wanted children, but who couldn't bear the thought of their niece being taken into care. Duty done, when their ward leaves school, they set her up with her own flat, then they retire to Cornwall, leaving Dana to fend for herself. For Sam, circumstances couldn't have been more different. Ten years Dana's senior, he still lives at home in his own suite of rooms in the family mansion, he has enjoyed a privileged upbringing and social background, the only child of hardworking father and a devoted mother, both professional people and socialites, who are horrified by his choice of bride.

It is decided that Dana should give up her flat and move in with Sam until the wedding, although tensions are raised even further when the young couple announce that they will be looking to purchase their own house, rather than continue to live with Evelyn and Harold, which is what the older couple had assumed would happen. Sam dotes on his parents, particularly his mother, so when bad things begin happening to Dana, which she believes are down to Evelyn trying to break them up and stop the wedding, he tries to justify them as being down to Dana's pre-wedding nerves. Evelyn takes charge of the wedding preparations, with little input from Dana and more from Tamara, the daughter of close family friends, who seems just a little too cosy for comfort with Sam and is obviously Evelyn's daughter-in-law of choice.

Dana suffers one small injury after another in the run-up to the big day and even Lynne, Dana's only real friend and her maid of honour, eventually has to admit that something is definitely very wrong in the Corbett household. Even the new cleaner, Ruby, senses the bad vibes and bears the brunt of Evelyn's wrath more than once. Evelyn and Harold seem like the perfect couple, however Dana catches them arguing on more than one occasion and what she overhears rocks her to her core. She desperately wants to confide in Sam, but fears that he will be unwilling to believe what she needs to tell him, so she decides to hold her counsel until after the wedding and honeymoon, by which time the house they have bid on should be available to move into and she can choose her moment carefully.

When a distraught Ruby confides in Dana about who she really is and why she is working for Evelyn, Dana knows she can't prevaricate too long before laying things on the line for Sam, as the situation has the potential to spiral out of control quite quickly. Just how quickly Dana is about to find out, when small seemingly unrelated 'accidents' turn into something much more serious and two attempts are made on her life, but from a different source she hadn't anticipated. Fortunately, Sam witnesses both incidents for himself and what he sees rocks to its foundations, the stable family unit he had believed himself to be part of, particularly when Dana then reveals the secret she has been keeping for the last couple of weeks.

Is there destined to be any happy-ever-afters for this newly extended family - Now that would be telling!!

..

Narrated in the first person, by Dana herself, this multi-layered storyline is broken down into clearly signposted chapters, which whilst slightly longer than those designated by many of the author's contemporaries, still gave me plenty of opportunity to come up for air and kept the pace of the story moving along nicely, even though a few weeks must have seemed like a lifetime for Dana. Some clever red herrings and plenty of subtle twists and turns, meant I also had no idea that I was trying to uncover multiple suspects, although my many names in the frame did read like a shopping list with just about everyone on it, including Dana herself at one point. Suspects with completely diverse motives, but with Dana as their common focus and means to an end, and with totally different outcomes required.

The slow-burning, highly textured plot, unfolds day by day over a relatively short timeframe, and is definitely all in the anticipation. I just knew that bad things were going to keep happening to Dana, but exactly how, what and when, was always a shocking surprise when I least expected it. In themselves, these seemingly random events were not earth-shattering, however, they all contributed to an almost continual ramping up of the tension for our already anxious bride-to-be, particularly when she gets the impression that neither her fiance, nor her best friend Lynne, really think that things are as bad as they sound and put them down to clumsy pre-wedding nerves. Knowing Dana as well as Lynne does, she is aware of her friends long-term stress and anxiety issues and is increasingly fearful of where the ongoing situation might lead if things aren't stabilised sooner rather than later. What neither she or Sam realises however, is that Dana's disturbed background is nothing compared to someone else's sordid and dangerous secrets which they will do anything to keep hidden. Even when a partially revealed truth might have had me considering handing out the 'tea and sympathy' vote, I still couldn't get over the way in which Dana was being used as little more than a pawn in everyone's game.

Mind you, she doesn't really do much to help herself and I just kept thinking what a doormat she was allowing herself to be treated as. The way her naivety and eagerness to be accepted was being used and taken advantage of would have become quite annoying, if I hadn't known that things were probably going to escalate out of hand and the situation explode out of control at some point in time. Sam is too busy trying to appease 'mummy', who he has set on a very impressive pedestal, to see what is really happening right under his nose and although he makes all the right noises, it takes a life or death situation to stir him into decisive action.

Whilst the physical footprint the story occupies, is quite finely focussed, the narrative about specific places is very descriptive with good spatial awareness. However, for any seriously confirmed ‘armchair travellers’ among you, this one might be a little light on location.

There were so many difficult emotional issues bubbling away beneath the surface, any one of which would have made a storyline in their own right, although I felt that author Karen King, did an amazing job of dealing with each of them, without allowing any single one of them to dominate or overtake events. Hidden mental health issues, self-harm, illicit affairs, abuse and coercion, a woman's overwhelming need to establish her birth-right, a mother's desperate bid to keep her son beside her. All denouements which were woven together into a complex plot which I never completely managed to unravel for myself. Frustrating for me, but it kept me glued to the pages right until the bitter end. Job done by a consummate author and a clever storyteller.

As someone who would not make it through living with my own mother in law, I was drawn to this book immediately! While some of it was repetitive, I loved the short chapters and I feel like that really added to the suspense.

I loved the idea of this book more than the actual book in the end. There was just not enough to feel fully invested for a memorable read. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC.

This was an awesome read. Probably spend just half a day to finish this. I’d reccommend this to those who would love a decent thriller that could keep them guessing through to the end. Really good.

Cheers to Netgalley for the copy!

This was such a welcome change to the thriller scene! I felt dodgey about Sam the whole time (not just the mom). Awesome surprise at the end!

Such a good story, very entertaining and suspenseful that I enjoyed it so much I read it in one night. I like how the story kept in line with the stereotype of mother-in- laws, but the relationship between this mother and son was so over the top, the things that the mother-in -law did was beyond normal. The son acted like such a zombie unable to believe his mom would do something so horrible and going along with whatever his mom suggested. I was more concerned for our heroine who chose this person to marry, who clearly has no boundaries with his mom and cannot set limits and continue to let her interfere so many times. I wish the story focused more on her prior attempts with prior relationships to understand the level of unhealthiness on the mom's part. The story had a very good twist and if you manage to get through halfway through all will be revealed. It tied the story nicely, but I didn't like the son for not being a stronger person and they could have developed his character more, in my eyes he was a dimwit. The other thing I pondered is with this twist whether the gene would pass on to the son and whether there would be a possible follow up story to this.

A great story by another new author to me and one I will definitely be looking out for in future.

Dana has met “the one” and Sam feels the same. After a whirlwind romance of only 2 months, he proposes and although fast, she agrees to marry him as they both feel they have found their soulmate. Sam still lives at home with his parents albeit in a huge country manor where he has a suite of rooms, so he has been saving money for a mortgage on a dream home. Dana and Sam decide to get married quickly and start looking for their forever home so they can move into it when they come back from honeymoon. However, when their brand-new house sale falls through Dana has little choice but to move in with Sam and his parents just before the wedding as she has already left her own little flat. Harold, Sam’s dad, is lovely and supportive but Evelyn, Sam’s mum, takes a disliking to Dana and enjoys making her feel uncomfortable. Throw into the mix a family friend, Tamara, who Evelyn feels is a much more suitable wife for Sam and delights in mentioning this numerous times to Dana and a big family secret that Dana overhears by accident. Suddenly mysterious accidents start to happen to Dana, and she wonders whether she will even make it up the aisle to marry Sam as someone seems to have it really in for her!

This was a very good book, and I enjoyed every minute of reading it. I found the storyline pretty addictive, and I did start getting annoyed when life got in the way of reading it- that’s the sign of a good book in my eyes. I liked the characters and particularly enjoyed the close friendship Dana had with Lynne, her best friend. I kept changing my mind over who I thought the baddie was, and I was so happy I did not get it right which was brilliant as I was definitely surprised when it came to light who had it in for Dana.

With twists and turns at almost every corner I would highly recommend it for fans of psychological thrillers, you won’t regret it. I can’t wait to read Karen King’s next book.

Thank you to NetGalley, Karen King and Bookouture for my advanced reading copy. Out now.

Loved this fast paced thriller. The writing style was engaging. I didnt know who had done it. I was connected to the characters. The characters were believable and relatable.