Psychological Thriller . Domestic Thriller . Unreliable Narrator . Gaslighting . Fearful Protagonist . Twists . 

Joanne is in the home of her dreams with a doting older husband, Richard, who would do just about anything for her and her new baby, Evie. However, she finds that that perfect life comes at a cost. 

Feelings of isolation and loneliness set in, and she seems muddle-headed a lot of the time - confused and often forgetting the simplest of things. 

When Richard's estranged daughter, Chloe, comes to visit suddenly, Joanne's world begins to shift off of its axis. Though she is excited to meet Chloe at first and attempts to start off on the right foot with her, being the type of person who wants to please everyone, everything Joanne says and does is deflected negatively by Chloe, and her own self-depreciation and self-doubt clouds in on her thoughts even more. Despite feeling like Chloe despises her, she still gives her the benefit of the doubt, even when she acts like a completely different person when Richard is around, trying to pit him against her. 

Family secrets - indications of Richard and Chloe's ominous past, as well as hidden aspects of their personalities, are slowly revealed. Joanne becomes increasingly paranoid and fearful of her and Evie's life, with no one immediate to turn to. To top it off, persistent thoughts and forced reminders of her own family's past of "postpartum psychosis" (ch 13, pg 77) being hereditary prays naggingly upon her subconscious. 

"How does the saying go again? Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an evil stepdaughter lurking around trying to kill your baby." (ch 13, pg 76) 

She has to find out what those secrets are, exactly, and find a way to circumvent a repeat of history to save her own life and the life of her child.
 ..... 

Where, for me, this wasn't as "can't put down" as I thought it would be, it was still interesting enough to keep my attention. There was more than one twist to this plot, and it had me second-guessing my assumptions and kicking myself for not sticking with the nibbling reasonings in the back of my mind. At a few points, I even started to suspect that maybe there was a paramormal element to this book. 

Some of it, like the behaviors, suspicion, malicious intent, etc. kind of flash-reminded me of the 2009 film, Orphan, written by David Leslie Johnson. 

Also, you know how sometimes you're watching a thriller or horror movie and you want to yell at the screen when someone is about to do something that goes against common sense grain and they throw self-preservation out of the window? I was getting pretty frustrated with Joanne when she kept shrugging things off like she was the one that did something wrong in every single instance as if the behaviors that were directed toward her were justified. It didn't help that Chloe and Richard played off one another and projected their blame onto Joanne whenever possible to make her feel more and more like she were losing her sanity. 

"'Not everything is what it seems, you know.' .... 'You're going to have to figure it out sooner or later.' .... 'Sooner would be better.'" (ch 31, pg 192). 

Thrillers are not my genre norm, but I'm glad I ventured out a little and took a chance on this read. It's good to change things up here and there, like a challenge for the gears of the imagination.

The book could have been shortened significantly. I felt like the gaslighting between Chloe and Joann became the entire theme of the novel and continued for HOURS of the book. Approximately 5 hours into the audiobook, I heavily considered DNFing the book, because the gaslighting was just so overdone (and in a childish way, albeit). I didn’t want to listen to it anymore. Thankfully, the last hour and a half of the book picked up and the plot thickened.

The characters were gaslighting ME. The moral of the story is, trust your gut.

Jealousy, brainwashing, manipulating, discusses infant death, post partum depression & psychosis

Wow - as far as psychological suspense goes, this was one for the books! I found it a little repetitious at times, but it's a fast read.