A husband goes in pursuit of his missing wife in this domestic thriller.
When Natalie Hart and her two children leave the hotel room they've reserved for a family vacation in New York, husband Michael goes full on super detective to find them. Why did Natalie escape and what is Michael hiding. Lots of secrets and lies in this crazy drama.
Told in alternating points of view between Natalie and Michael, there's a lot to unpack. First of all, Natalie has been trying to deal with crippling insomnia and the lack of sleep has impaired her thinking to the point that she's apparently having hallucinations and memory problems. I did not think either of those was contagious, but in his storytelling, Michael also seems to have some issues. Neither is reliable as a narrator, and I found that I didn't care for either of the pair. In fact, none of the characters in the book are likeable and the reader has no clue of who has done what to whom. The tale of Michael chasing Natalie across the USA with an NYPD detective in cahoots was a bit of a hard buy in and somewhat ludicrous. A great deal of suspension of disbelief was required.
I found this more irritating than exciting and between Natalie being almost delusional and the reader led to think that Michael is gaslighting her (is this in all the books now) the story just becomes one long slog as I raced to the conclusion to finally get some sort of truth. Even then, the last couple of chapters bordered on complete ridiculousness. I guess if people were open and honest all the time, we'd have no domestic thrillers dealing with husbands and wives. Basically this was a long, drawn out ride with an ending that fell short of my expectations. So 2.5 stars rounded up.
Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for this e-book ARC to read and review.
This is a standalone and is not part of any series.
Genre - domestic drama, thriller, insomnia, gaslighting
No comments:
Post a Comment