Book Review #27 Want to know a secret by Freida McFadden

Want to know a secret 

Author : Freida Mcfadden

Language : English

Genre : Crime, mystery thriller

About the book

Everyone has secrets.

YouTube baking sensation April Masterson knows the secret to the perfect gooey brownies. Or how to make key lime squares that will melt in your mouth. But if you keep watching her offline, you may find out some other secrets about April.  Secrets she’d rather you didn’t know.

Like where did her son go when he snuck out of the house?  What was she doing with the local soccer coach behind fogged windows?

And what’s buried in her backyard?

Everyone has secrets. Some are worse than others.

April’s secrets are enough to destroy her. 

I’ll make sure of that.

About the author

Freida McFadden is a practicing physician specializing in brain injury who has penned multiple Kindle bestselling psychological thrillers and medical humor novels. She lives with her family and black cat in a centuries-old three-story home overlooking the ocean, with staircases that creak and moan with each step, and nobody could hear you if you scream. Unless you scream really loudly, maybe.

My take

This story takes place in a simple, close knit residential block, reminding me of desperate housewives, with women trying to show off their own talents and assets, mom's obsessed and sometimes overly involved in the school activities of their off springs, wives prying on others' husband's and poking nose in others business, a dominating, judgemental woman who decides that she is the authority, and formulates her own rules and regulations, as other women try to swoon around her and compete with each other to win over her heart.

April Masterson is one such mom, the wife of a super busy lawyer who doesn't have time for his wife or seven year old son Bobby. But April has made her own identity, by hosting a baking show on YouTube, which is slowly becoming an internet sensation.

Her best friend Julie Bressler is the self declared boss whom April keeps trying to please, by attending the book clubs she hosts, albeit never reading the concerned book, and by volunteering for anything that Julie asks from her as the president of parent teacher association, be it a bake sale or a silent auction.

A new neighbour, Maria, arrives next door and she has a son the same age as April's and Julie's. April now hopes the kids will be best friends and so will be the mom's. But there's one more thing. Maria has a super handsome hot husband Sean, and he seems to be falling for April's baked goods.

But things don't happen as planned. April begins receiving messages from a blocked number - messages that threaten to expose her reality. Things for which there is no explanation begin to happen and soon April's life begins spiralling out of control. And April has no idea who is doing this. And why.

The story is very well written. Even though the plot sounds cliche, it still makes an interesting read. Most part of the story is narrated from the POV of April and the rest is from the POV of the perpetrator. 

The flow of the story is nice and the incidents that happen keep us hooked on to know what exactly is going on, what exactly is happening and what is it that April is trying so hard to hide.

The ending is twisted and I never saw it coming. The characters are well sketched, and I have started appreciating unreliable narrators as well.

I am absolutely loving this author - the way she can twist even the simplest of plots in such a way that a normal story becomes a nail biting thriller.

The cover page is attractive, and I rate this one 4 stars.

Book review #26 The perfect marriage by Jeneva Rose

The Perfect Marriage 

Author : Jeneva Rose

Publisher : Bloodhound Books

Language : English

Genre : Psychological suspense thriller

About the book

Sarah Morgan is a successful and powerful defense attorney in Washington D.C. As a named partner at her firm, life is going exactly how she planned. The same cannot be said for her husband, Adam. He’s a struggling writer who has had little success in his career and he tires of his and Sarah’s relationship as she is constantly working. 

Out in the secluded woods, at the couple’s lake house, Adam engages in a passionate affair with Kelly Summers. But one morning everything changes. Kelly is found brutally stabbed to death and now, Sarah must take on her hardest case yet, defending her own husband, a man accused of murdering his mistress. 

About the author

Jeneva Rose is a lover of reading, cooking, board games, and wine. She also writes under the pen name J. R. Adler. Originally from Wisconsin, she spent a couple of years in Ithaca, New York, and now calls Charlotte, North Carolina home.

My Take

The perfect marriage is the story of the the marriage between Sarah Morgan, a super successful criminal attorney and her husband Adam Morgan, a struggling author. Almost ten years into their marriage, Adam finds himself struggling to get the attention and time of his high strung career-oriented wife while he himself struggles to make it big in the literary world. They love each other, but like every marriage, there are problems. Sarah doesn't want kids, Adam wants them. Sarah is busy with her work, Adam isn't. Adam wants to spend quality time with Sarah, but Sarah can't. And the inevitable happens. Adam begins a clandestine affair with a married woman, Kelly Summers, at their lake house that doubles up as his writing space.

One fine day, when Adam juggles between spending the evening with his mistress at the lakehouse and the night next to his wife in their bed at his home two hours apart, Kelly is brutally murdered, and Adam becomes the prime suspect.

Despite being hurt by the betrayal and angry at her husband, Sarah, being the best criminal attorney her husband can ever afford, takes on his case. 

Many characters add different angles to the story - Kelly's abusive husband Scott, whom Adam suspects to be the murderer, Adam's mother Eleanor,  who holds Sarah responsible for everything that's happened, including Adam's affair, Sarah's boss Kent, her professional rival Bob, her assistant  Anne, her friend Matthew. As the story unfolds, newer aspects of the story reveal, new characters are unveiled and the suspense grippens.

The story is narrated in alternating points of view between Sarah and Adam. The flow of story is good and catches pace, making it intriguing.

However, the biggest let down is the cliched ending. The ending is a total let down and takes away all the build up of suspense. It takes away the credibility of the narrator, and at the same time makes it unrealistic. There are many loose ends which are never explained, such as what really happened to Kelly's first husband, if Scott wasn't abusive, why was Kelly lying and how was the third person involved in all of this, etc. There is no explanation for the way things end and that leaves us without a satisfactory closure.

The cover page is catching and I was drawn towards the book because of the cover.

So even though I enjoyed reading the story, even though it held my interest and piqued my curiosity throughout, the ending didn't make justice to the plot and was a disappointment.

I rate it 3 / 5 stars.