My Rating:

Favorite Quotes:

She signs the visitor’s log, and the receptionist passes her a neon-green sticker to affix to her shirt. Proof that Graye isn’t some rogue criminal, there to ravish old ladies and steal pieces from the jigsaw puzzles.

She stares at him for a beat, struggling to remind herself of the man she knows he can be—when he isn’t being this one. It’s getting more difficult every day to bring that man to mind.

Whom you choose to be married to is your business, Laura. I decided a long time ago that love must be an evolutionary adaptation… It’s nature’s way of allowing even mediocre men to find a mate… Oh, child. How naive you are…   If procreation were reserved only for extraordinary men, the species would have died a slow, sputtering death centuries ago.

A bad marriage is a forge. Once you’re in it, your only choice is to push forward and find your way out of the flames, scars and all, hopefully stronger for it… The alternative is to sit there and be burned to nothing.

She knows dwelling on could-have-been and should-have-been doesn’t change what is, but some days that’s a hard lesson to remember.

My Review:

This was a twisty, maddeningly paced, brilliantly plotted, and ingeniously written tale with a cast of intriguing and largely aberrant characters. While it was soon evident that one of the main characters was mentally disturbed as she noted concern with “losing track of what’s real and what isn’t;” I just hadn’t realized the extent or how far back the decimation went. Ms. Maxwell’s evocative writing was uniquely compelling, devastating, diabolical, and dauntingly engrossing. I was taut with tension and transfixed to my Kindle while nearly insane with impatience and driven to know every deeply buried secret past and present.   I am on the hook and her devoted fangirl for life. I covet her advanced level of word sorcery and am greedily plotting to read her every word.

Eliza Maxwell is the author of The Widow’s Watcher, The Unremembered Girl, The Grave Tender, and The Kinfolk. She writes fiction from her home in Texas, which she shares with her ever-patient husband, two impatient kids, a ridiculous English setter, and a bird named Sarah. An artist and writer, a dedicated introvert, and a British-cop-drama addict, she enjoys nothing more than sitting on the front porch with a good cup of coffee.

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