Thank you NetGalley and Putnam Books for the chance to read the story of The Couple in the Photo. This is a book with very few very flawed characters. They lie, cheat and murder and do a good job of covering up their actions. One character, Lucy, is the only one who is innocent. The twists are huge and unexpected. Each person blames the others for their actions and it's a puzzle to figure out who is telling the truth. There is lots of tense moments as the story becomes clearer with a dramatic climax and a satisfying ending. It is a fast read and hard to put down. I would recommend this book to anyone

5 stars

Phew, I don’t think I could have held that in until the end of this review, so I might as well get it out of the way.

5 stars

Yes, I think I’m still in shock, hence my repetitive speech

5 stars

Ok, I think you got it now.

If you haven’t already pre-ordered this book, you need to now. I promise you won’t regret it .

The Couple in the Photo

This book is straight up twisted! I mean, wow!

Holy, moly, my head might have just spun right on off my shoulders!

Helen Cooper, has done it again!

Lies, Secrets, Deceit.. Well, now you're just speaking my love language!!

Talk about a scandal, this book delivers!

Cooper has just swung herself into the “auto buy” category and I can not wait to see what comes next!

Check out this teaser :

Be careful who you sleep with...They've already made their bed.

Lucy and her husband, Adam, have been best friends with another couple, Cora and Scott, for years. The four are practically family—they vacation together, co-own a beach cottage, and their children are inseparable. So Lucy is devastated when, while looking at a colleague’s photos of a trip to the Maldives, she spots a picture of Scott, apparently on vacation with another woman.

Then she learns that the woman in the photo has gone missing. Lucy can’t help but fear that Scott was involved. But searching for answers might uncover secrets about Scott, Cora, and even her own husband that could destroy the picture-perfect lives they have built together. Or maybe she was never part of the picture at all. Is it possible everyone knows more than they are letting on? If so, what are the consequences of exposing the truth?

#TheCoupleInThePhoto was sooooo hard for me to read . I found it to be such a slow burn & honestly boring ... The idea sounded good & interesting but imo fell flat & in the end the whole "why" was again imo completely far fetched & hard to believe so I guess in short I wasn't feeling this book .

I appreciate the opportunity to read the Arc though . Thanks again #NetGalley

R E V I E W 🫶🏼

✨ This was an ARC gifted to me by the Putnam Books via Netgalley. The following review is my own and contains my honest thoughts and opinions. ✨

📚The Couple in the Photo
📝 Helen Cooper
📌 Book 69/50 for 2023

𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4)
𝗚𝗘𝗡𝗥𝗘: Psychological Thriller
𝗦𝗧𝗘𝗔𝗠 𝗟𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗟: 🚫

𝗥𝗘𝗩𝗜𝗘𝗪 📖
This was a super fast read for me, with great pacing from start to finish. The author did a great job with adding in little details about people throughout the book that keeps the reader skeptical of every character. I enjoy suspenseful reads like this where there is several feasible outcomes, and while the culprit was one of the people I’d suspected, the plot was not expected. I enjoyed the short timeline, with most of the story happening within the span of a week or so - some chapters giving the reader minute-by-minute action. I felt that the characters were complex and the single POV provided a wonderful level of mystery. I’m definitely interested in reading more from Cooper! 📸

𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗗 𝗜𝗙 𝗬𝗢𝗨 𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘 ⤵️
betrayal 💔, secret lovers 🤫, whodunnit 🔍, fast reads 📚, unexpected endings 😳, friend group drama 🎭

3.5 rounded up
Lucy has been shown some vacation pictures. These vacation pictures happen to have a couple in them. The man is surely her best friends husband, Scott. The next day, the woman from the photos is shown on the news as missing.
Lucy wants to see the photo of the couple again because surely she was mistaken about the guy that was in the photo. But now her friend is acting strange and won't show her the photo again
Lucy feels in her gut that something is wrong
She starts investigating and quizzing Scott but keeps coming up short
Should she tell Cora, her best friend, what she saw
Or should she keep digging so she can have proof to take to the police that Scott most certainly hurt the woman he was cheating with
Everyone is lying, it seems, and Lucy is determined to figure out why

This was your run of the mill thriller. Affairs, secrets, murder…all common themes. This was about a group of friends with some deep secrets tying them to the disappearance of an old classmate. When the story starts to come to life, the ending was guessable but the playing out was well done.

The Couple in the Photo by Helen Cooper
Narrator: Naomi Frederick
Rating: 4 stars
Pub date: 12/5

This rollercoaster of friendship, betrayal, and unexpected twists hooked me from the first page! Lucy, Adam, Cora, and Scott are two couples with an unshakeable, tight-knit friendship until Lucy stumbles upon a photo that threatens to shatter everything.

I love how Cooper takes a simple photograph and turns it into a catalyst for uncovering years of hidden secrets. Lucy's internal struggle about whether to reveal the photo to her best friend or confront her own husband adds an extra layer of tension, which kept me on the edge of my seat.

The characters are well-developed, and as more of the truth comes out, their lives begin to unravel in unexpected ways. Lucy is the most relatable as she attempts to navigate the tangled web of emotions and loyalties among the friends. My heart broke for her the closer we got to the truth.

I do wish Lucy had been more assertive in expressing herself. Nevertheless, I enjoyed this story and its exploration of the complexities of seemingly perfect relationships. The story's pace and the surprising twists kept me engaged, making it a fast and gripping read. Thank you so much to Penguin Group Putnam for my advanced copy and PRH Audio for my complimentary audiobook. The narrator, Naomi Frederick, did an excellent job bringing all the characters to life.

The Couple in the Photo comes out on 12/5.

I thought the idea was good for a book but seemed difficult to believe . I found it to be a slow burn with boring characters , I felt the characters got confusing for me .

In these days of normal Instagram-stalking (“Where is this geolocation?” “Who is the tagged person?”), seeing a picture with a surprise face probably happens quite a bit. But when the surprise face is a mystery woman being cozy with a married friend, that sets Lucy into a spin. Adam, Scott and Cora were close college friends; Lucy, the odd person out, married Adam. Scott and Cora have been their best friends for 15 years. But when Lucy is looking at co-worker Ruth’s Maldives week old honeymoon photos, there’s Scott, supposedly on a business trip in Japan now, with someone who is definitely not Cora. Ruth insists Scott and his female friend were the “smoochiest” couple, but she also says their names were Jason and Anna. Lucy almost considers a doppelgänger scenario, but a news report shocks her again: a British woman is missing in the Maldives — and it’s Scott’s photo companion, now identified as Juliet, an aerospace journalist (and Scott is in the aerospace industry).

The story builds as Lucy just can’t let go — unable to believe that the photo was an illusion, she risks her friendship with Scott and Cora and creates tension in her own marriage after confiding to Adam. It’s easy to think that maybe Lucy is just being a busybody, but she keeps uncovering more and more unsettling things. The tension builds with each revelation and you get hooked as Lucy realizes that she’s really an outsider. 5 stars!

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): NO No eye colors mentioned at all.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO But there are unnamed scarlet and blue wildflowers behind the cottage. I imagined bee balm and bachelor’s buttons.

Thank you to GP Putnam/ Penguin RandomHouse and NetGalley for a free advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of The Couple in the Photo in exchange for an honest review.

I quite enjoyed this novel overall. Lucy, the main character, perfectly encapsulated the feeling of joining an already-established friend group and the nuances that come with that history. While I personally guessed multiple of the twists, the author's writing was interesting enough to keep me engaged throughout the book.

This novel highlights the fact that nobody's perfect and we've all got demons in our closets.

A very interesting storyline. Two couples — Lucy and Adam, Cora and Scott — are best friends. While looking at honeymoon pictures of her coworker, Cora sees a picture of Scott with another woman. After that woman disappears, the friendship slowly begins to unravel because suspicions abound.

This definitely kept my interest and was a real page-turner with enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing somewhat. If the pacing was a bit tighter and a bit more even, I think this would be a great read. As it was, it was a good read, and I look forward to reading more from this author.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for giving me a free eARC of this book to read in exchange for my review!

The Couple in the Photo follows Lucy and her husband Adam. They have been friends with Cora and Scott for years. One day at work a coworker shows Lucy pictures from her vacation. Lucy notices that there is another couple in the picture and one of the people turns out to be Scott but the woman in the photo is not Cora. Lucy does not want to tell Cora about the photo. But then all the sudden the women in the photo turns up dead and Lucy thinks that Scott is somehow involved. As Lucy starts finding out the truth she starts to find out there are consequences for knowing the truth.

I thought this was just an okay thriller. I will say this was a very fast-paced thriller. I did think that story was interesting. But I predicted the killer pretty early on in this book. Like it was super obvious who the killer was. So I feel like this book left no surprises at all. I wish the author would have done a better job of not making this book so predictable. By the time I got to the end, I was like really this is it. I also felt like this book was super repetitive. I don't regret reading this one and I will read more by this author. But this one just missed the mark for me.

Thank you Netgalley and Putman books for the ARC of this book.

Pretty standard mystery/thriller. A book that’s good for traveling or an easy distraction.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62296522

Lucy, Adam, Cora, and Scott are an inseparable foursome until Lucy spies Scott with another woman in a coworker's honeymoon picture. After that, we are taken on a wild ride. Many lies and secrets will be uncovered. Oh, the tangled web... The Couple in the Photo held my attention and kept me wondering what event would happen next. I thought it was a good read!

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this book. The opinions are my own.

The Couple in the Photo
Written By Helen Cooper
Published By Penguin Group Putnam
Release Date December 05, 2023

Characters: 4/5
Plot: 4/5
Pace: 3/5
Suspense: 4/5
Overall Enjoyment: 4/5


Married couples Lucy and Adam and Cora and Scott have been friends for a very long time. They do almost everything together. Down to owning a beach condo together. It seems though that someone has a secret. Lucy is looking at her colleagues honeymoon photos and lo and behold she sees Scott with another woman who is now missing. Lucy wants to keep that a secret as well from her friend but once she realizes there is more to the story she knows what she must do. A well written suspense novel that holds the secrets even as the reader is learning all of the intricacies of the thrill. Will the mysterious woman be found and if so what does Scott have to do with her?

Cooper definitely knows how to keep the reader engaged and entertained while the twists keep coming.

4 stars

Thank you to NetGalley as well as the author and publisher for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my unbiased and honest review.

I enjoyed the mystery and romance in this book but I felt like the plot got lost at times. It was a decent read, not my favorite.

3.5 stars!! Intense and kept me engaged, although I did find myself skimming through unnecessary detail quite a bit. Didn't expect the ending or exactly how everything unfolded, but I knew it would go in the direction it did, if that makes sense? Always fun to read a truly up to date contemporary thriller that has updated technology references, etc.

I enjoyed this book! It was exciting and twisty! I liked the premise too and it felt original. At times, it felt a little long but overall, it was a great 4 star read.

It has been a while since I have read a book from the Suspense/Thriller genre. They make me too anxious, and I have trouble putting the book down because I want to know who did it. When I was given an opportunity to read Couple in the Photo by Helen Cooper from NetGalley, I decided to give it a go.

I was captivated by this book right off the bat. It starts from page one, and I didn’t want to put it down until the end. Lucy, a devoted wife and mother, whose world is shattered by lies and deceit. Adam, Cora and Scott whose lies and dark secrets finally catch up to them. The buried secrets keep coming one after the other. You could feel Lucy’s pain of being lied to all these years and Cora’s pure selfish evilness made you want her to finally get what was coming to her. I was shocked when it came at the hands of Adam, the one person that loved Cora unconditionally and really would, and did, anything for her. Helen Cooper knows how to weave a tale of jaw dropping moments that keep you wanting to turn the page.

I have never read a book by Helen Cooper, and I am glad I read Couple in the Photo, it is a page turner that introduced me to a new author. I Will definitely pick up her other books.