Wow! What a wild ride that was!
Victoria Jenkins book had me hooked from the start. When you think you know where the story’s going another plot twist pops up!
Highly recommend this read!

I’m really glad that the author changed this to general fiction and mystery and suspense, because it truly made no sense for it to be in the romance category at all. The story was primarily about the wife trying to dig into what secrets her husband was keeping.
There are multiple POVs that can be a little difficult to juggle, and there are some unreliable narrators pointing you in different directions.
Overall, not bad, but there’s really not a single likable person in this book.

Many thanks to Netgalley for providing me with the DRC and allowing me to provide my honest review

A book where things aren’t quite as they seem …….. secrets, twists and much much more.

Natalie and Jake were childhood sweethearts but they are now struggling to keep their heads above water. The farm they run isn’t making enough money so they decide to take in a lodger, Kara……..but who is this young, ambitious woman?
And will she help Natalie and Jake survive the hard times or will she cause even more problems for the couple?

A great twisty psychological thriller that is a great page turner. A great plot that will keep you engaged from staff to finish. Victoria Jenkins really has found her place in the psychological thriller market and this will cement her standing even more.

Thank you to Bookouture and NetGalley for a digital copy of this book.

Enjoyed this book a lot. Very twisty and keeps you guessing. It takes a little while to get going but then it picks up a lot.

This was good. It was a bit slow but I enjoyed all of the twists and look forward to reading more from this author.

This was a fast paced psychological thriller that kept the reader on their toes throughout and that really keeps you guessing from start to finish as no one is really who you think they are. Full of secrets and lies and twists and turns.

An amazing twisty thriller that keeps you hooked and guessing throughout. Read it, enjoy it and the twist at the end it’s brilliant 100% recommend

#HappilyMarried #NetGalley
Jake and Natalie Prosser run a working dairy farm in Carmarthenshire, Wales. They have one daughter, three-and-a-half-year-old Elsie, who is a little small and slow for her age, following a serious illness during babyhood, which is potentially going to leave her with a heart defect. The farm is Natalie's childhood home, which she inherited and stayed on to run following the death of her parents in very tragic circumstances, when she was a teenager, which has left her needing constant medication for depression and trauma. She, Jake and farmhand Tyler, were childhood friends, although which one of the two Natalie would end up marrying, was never certain until it actually happened, especially as Tyler had spent so much of his childhood with the Prosser family, following the particularly harrowing events surrounding his own father's death and his mother's subsequent alcohol addiction issues.
Thanks to NetGalley and Bookouture for giving me an advance copy.

A brilliant psychological thriller that had me hooked. So many twists and turns that kept me hanging on for the entire book.

You need to read it for the twist alone! I’m not saying anything else, go in blind and enjoy the ride!

This will leave you breathless and all the hair on your body will be standing up. It starts as the perfect love story but it ends up exploding!

As someone who loves domestic thrillers and multiple pov's, this one really grabbed my attention! Worth a read.

4⭐️ The twists and turns, I was not expecting that. Definitely a good read.

Thank you so much NetGalley and Bookouture for the ARC

That was one crazy book.
Excellent domestic thriller that I couldn’t guess.
All the povs had no name and you presume to know who it is, but it’s not.
The story slaps you in the face half way through, then gets really exciting.
And it’s never what you think until the very end.

What I loved about this book was the short chapters. Having read one of her books previously I had high expectations for this one. Unfortunately it fell short because it was just too slow .

I love a good thriller and this one certainly did not disappoint! Normally I can figure out as I’m reading what is going to happen, or who the bad character is, but this book stumped me and I certainly wasn’t expecting the huge plot twist! When people are in a desperate situation and open their home to a stranger, sometimes things happen that they weren’t expecting. Bringing Kara in as a border was supposed to help financially, but what price did Natalie pay.

Ok this one was crazy and has a twist halfway through that I guarantee you didn’t see coming. Cleverly written and cleverly thought out.

"A husband with a secret. A wife dying to tell"

...
As I write this, author Victoria Jenkins has penned eight stand alone crime fiction novels to date. I have read the last two only, but I am determined to re-visit some of the earlier books, simply to see if there has been any change in her style of writing, or if this "kick you in the gut when you are least expecting it" format, is par for the course, because I love it!

This domestic drama / psychological thriller definitely worked for me!...
...

Jake and Natalie Prosser run a working dairy farm in Carmarthenshire, Wales. They have one daughter, three-and-a-half-year-old Elsie, who is a little small and slow for her age, following a serious illness during babyhood, which is potentially going to leave her with a heart defect. The farm is Natalie's childhood home, which she inherited and stayed on to run following the death of her parents in very tragic circumstances, when she was a teenager, which has left her needing constant medication for depression and trauma. She, Jake and farmhand Tyler, were childhood friends, although which one of the two Natalie would end up marrying, was never certain until it actually happened, especially as Tyler had spent so much of his childhood with the Prosser family, following the particularly harrowing events surrounding his own father's death and his mother's subsequent alcohol addiction issues.

Following an outbreak of bovine TB, the farm is really struggling to keep its head above water and life is a constant battle against receivership for the friends, with Natalie having opened a coffee shop in one of the barns, as a way of making a little extra income during the summer months and from where she also sells her own, home-made ice cream. She also has a third, part-time evening job in one of the local gastro pubs, which is about a mile and a half walk each way, down some very quiet, unlit country lanes. Jake has managed to secure pitch time with a small supermarket chain, who might be interested in selling Natalie's ice cream, so she has her fingers well and truly crossed for that to be a successful bid. Working as many hours as they can fit into a day, means they have little or no time for a social life, except for Natalie's one friend, Holly, whose daughter goes to the same nursery as Elsie.

Things are not going too well for Jake and Natalie in their personal relationship either, with their marriage almost at breaking point, which is causing added tension around the place when they can ill afford it. Natalie is convinced that Jake is having an affair, as it is obvious that he doesn't want to be anywhere near her, keeping any form of physical contact to an absolute necessary minimum and conversation taciturn to the point of insolence. However, when she floats the idea of taking in a lodger to help make ends meet, Natalie is surprised by his objections, although it doesn't take her too long to win him over to her way of thinking. Enter Kara, an ex-law student, turned IT professional, who works from home and is quite undeterred by the solitude and remoteness of the farm. Natalie is surprised at how easy it had been to secure what seems to be the perfect tenant, however, after just a few days, she is already beginning to regret her decision, as her suspicious mind takes flight with all kinds of wild imaginings. Did Kara make such a quick and timely response to her advert for a tenant for a reason, as it looks as though she and Jake are much more comfortable in each others company than they should be for two people who have supposedly only just met for the first time?

Things are taken to a whole new level of intensity and danger over the coming weeks, when unforeseen accidents begin to happen around the farm, together with various unexpected and potentially life-threatening illnesses and some vicious anonymous accusations, which cause Natalie and Jake to come under the scrutiny of social services. Finally Natalie can take no more of the vendetta being waged against her and so convinced is she that her take on the situation is right, that despite Kara's and Jake's protestations of innocence, Kara is asked to leave immediately. Natalie is now forced to question everything she thought she knew about herself, her husband and her family. However Kara doesn't go too far from the farm before securing new accommodation, insisting to Natalie that she really is only there to help her...

The rest you need to read for yourself, but remember, no one is who you think they are and nothing is as it seems!!

...

Pretty much as I did when reading the previous book by this author, I quickly made assumptions... Right! I have this plot all worked out, so I am simply waiting for the slow burner, multi-faceted storyline, to unravel itself a bit at a time and for the perpetrator to reveal themselves... Once again however, I couldn't have got things more wrong if I had tried, so when not one, not two, but three final gut-punch twists were revealed, I was left stunned, reeling, and maybe just a little surprised that Natalie hadn't had an inkling about any of it at all, given how compact and insular, this small group of characters was.

Narrated by Natalie and a single third person, this well structured, dark and brooding, compulsive storyline, was presented in short, quite punchy chapters, with the pace of the action although slow, being totally relentless. I was constantly on the edge of my seat, holding my breath, as the secrets were fed into the narrative and dialogue, one agonising drip at a time, drawing out and ratcheting up the suspense and tension almost to breaking point. Just when I thought I had worked out the two separate strands to the story another curved ball was thrown into the mix, with that eventual dovetailing not finally happening until almost the final agonising scene of this rollercoaster ride.

There were so many trigger points, any of which would have led to mental health issues, even amongst the best of us. However, all of these characters seem to have slipped through the net of the relevant health professionals, especially worrying as they had been affected at such young ages and at the most vulnerable times in their upbringing and development. I guess that is because they closed ranks and tried to protect each other, which in the long term had clearly done them no favours. In fact, for one of them, their mind had been completely turned, until revenge and retribution was their all-consuming focus.

A relatively small cast of characters definitely made up for their diminished numbers, with the sheer tension and almost languid and cloying atmosphere they managed to create. They were all, to a person, volatile, complex, untrustworthy and vulnerable, thus making none of them authentic, genuine or reliable and at times it seemed as though I was wading through treacle, trying to shake off the doom and gloom of their combined dour, lugubrious and tenuous hold on reality. Their lives were really complete emotional train wrecks, although for one of them the lust for revenge and retribution, to the point where reality had almost ceased to exist, made this a journey the likes of which you can only imagine.


As an avid 'armchair traveller', despite being confined to one location, I was quite surprised to find myself relatively satisfied with my journey on this occasion. This story was predominantly all about the characters, their relationships to one another and the events which had drawn them together, so location was never really going to be a dominating factor. The storyline was set almost exclusively in and around the area of the farm, which was quite isolated and non-descript, sitting a little dejected and neglected, amidst the lush Welsh countryside. However, author Victoria Jenkins, used the full palette of words at her disposal to describe the buildings and surrounding vista, in a way which imbued a genuine sense of time and place, no matter how remote or rather depressing, to the point where I could myself wading through the farmyard debris, completely immersed in the doom and gloom around me.

Though it may be because I have read too many thrillers in a row, the bar was set a little high, It was not a bad story it just did not wow me the way I had hoped when first selecting this book. It kept me interested enough to keep reading, but even the plot twist did not deliver. I will definitely give the author another try on the next one though.

What a great read & intriguing storyline! This one had me hooked right from the start, I couldn't put it down!!!

I have always enjoyed Victoria Jenkins books and this one certainly didn’t disappoint, I couldn’t put it down. It is a book of secrets and lies with a brilliant twist halfway through. Natalie and Jake have a three year old daughter Elsie but their marriage is struggling as Jake seems distant and has little time for them. They inherited a farm from Natalie’s parents and run it with the help of Tyler, an old friend but finances are tight. Natalie convinces Jake that it would be a good idea to take in a lodger to help with their finances. Tara applies and moves in. Things seem to be going well until Natalie becomes suspicious that Tara and Jake are having an affair. Jake denies this but soon issues and malicious things start to happen at the farm. Natalie doesn’t know who to trust and her mental health stars to deteriorate. When Elsie’s well being is put in danger and social services get involved Natalie realises that she is in danger of losing everything. This is one of my favourite reads of the year and I look forward to her next book.
Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for giving me the opportunities to read and review this book.