A twisty domestic thriller I picked up by chance on holiday from the library’s “left books” shelf — and I’m so glad I did.
There’s something lovely about a book you weren’t looking for. I spotted this one on the left books shelf at the library, liked the look of the cover, and took a punt on an author I’d never heard of. Reader, it paid off.
The premise
Janie is a brand-new mother, exhausted, not quite feeling the things she thinks she’s supposed to feel, when her partner Max vanishes in the middle of the night, leaving her alone with their newborn daughter. Then a woman’s body is found, and Max becomes the prime suspect. The more Janie digs, the less she’s sure she ever really knew the man she loves.
What I loved
The characters felt believable, which is the thing that makes or breaks a thriller for me. Janie in particular reads like a real woman in the fog of early motherhood rather than a plot device, and that makes her bad decisions land as understandable instead of frustrating. The plotting is genuinely twisty — every time I thought I’d worked out where it was heading, Konen pulled the rug out again. Samantha Downing’s cover quote calls it “a taut, compelling thriller” and I’d agree; I read it far faster than I intended to.
My one small gripe
There’s a lot of very fine-grained detail about baby feeding, routines and the mechanics of newborn life. Some of it builds the claustrophobic, sleep-deprived atmosphere beautifully, but it tips over into too much in places and starts to slow the pace without adding anything to the plot. Trim a handful of those passages and this would be a five for me.
Verdict: 4.5 out of 5
A tense, well-plotted domestic thriller with a heroine you actually root for. I’d never come across Leah Konen before, but I’ll be hunting down more of her books — she’s also written The Perfect Escape.
Recommended if you like: twisty domestic suspense, unreliable-partner plots, and thrillers that dig into the darker side of new motherhood.
Have you read this one? Or found a gem on a library giveaway shelf? Tell me in the comments — I’m always after my next read.
You can buy the book here
Tags: book review, domestic thriller, Leah Konen, psychological thriller, library finds, what I’m reading
