I spent the long weekend catching up on my massive “To Be Read” pile, so prepare for a couple of reviews this week! The first up on my list (and also a past BOTM selection) was “Too Good To Be True” by Carola Lovering. This story was your classic domestic thriller: wife is blissfully unaware of her husband’s secrets…until one day she makes a startling discovery. The book was quick, exciting, and easy to get through!
Domestic thrillers are all the rage, and understandably so. However, I have found that they get somewhat predictable. Wife is a damsel in distress who finds a newfound strength by the end, husband is a narcissistic scumbag…the list goes on. “Too Good To Be True” took that trope and turned it on its head. I LOVED the twists in this story. I am a self-proclaimed “twist predictor” (aka, studying so many plots has given me clues into how stories will end…fun fact about me). In this story, I was shocked at a quarter of the way through, and half of the way through.
One thing to note: I didn’t feel as though poetic justice was 100% served at the end. Arguably, however, that was the point. It wasn’t an ending that left me feeling cheated or frustrated, though, which can be a difficult ending to write! Rarely am I not furious when poetic justice isn’t completely served.
Told in three perspectives, this story will keep you on your toes!
Synopsis:
Skye Starling is overjoyed when her boyfriend, Burke Michaels, proposes after a whirlwind courtship. Though Skye seems to have the world at her fingertips―she’s smart, beautiful, and from a well-off family―she’s also battled crippling OCD ever since her mother’s death when she was eleven, and her romantic relationships have suffered as a result.
But now Burke―handsome, older, and more emotionally mature than any man she’s met before―says he wants her. Forever. Except, Burke isn’t who he claims to be. And interspersed letters to his therapist reveal the truth: he’s happily married, and using Skye for his own, deceptive ends.
In a third perspective, set thirty years earlier, a scrappy seventeen-year-old named Heather is determined to end things with Burke, a local bad boy, and make a better life for herself in New York City. But can her adolescent love stay firmly in her past―or will he find his way into her future?
On a collision course she doesn’t see coming, Skye throws herself into wedding planning, as Burke’s scheme grows ever more twisted. But of course, even the best laid plans can go astray. And just when you think you know where this story is going, you’ll discover that there’s more than one way to spin the truth.
Books and Bites with Brooke 