STORY SUMMARY
Essie (short for Esther) Walker appears to the outside person to have the most charmed life. She has a loving husband, Ben (who runs a fitness studio) and a beautiful house in a suburban neighborhood in the city of Melbourne, Australia. Her mother, Barbara, lives nearby and totally dotes on Ben and Essie's 2 little girls (Mia, a preschooler and Polly a baby). Essie has friends in the neighborhood...they all lives on Pleasant Court. Fran and her husband Nigel have two daughters close to Essie's daughters ages. Rosie is a young preschooler and Ava is a baby. Nigel has had a bout of depression after losing some of their finances in a bad investment a year ago. Fran is very dedicated to her children but she also is obsessed with running.
Agnes and Lucas are married with 2 boys in elementary school named Will and Ollie. She has always wanted a daughter. Agnes is a successful real estate agent and Lucas works as a professional photographer. He also tends to have "flings" with other women.
Although Esse, Fran and Agnes are all good friends, they don't tend to share their "secrets" with one another. Esse, after Mia was born, once walked away from her sleeping daughter who was in the carriage at a local park. Disaster was averted though and Essie, after some time in an agency for people with emotional/mental issues, got better. However, she still does fear what might lurk inside her even as Mia gets older and Polly is born and thriving.
One day a new woman moves in. Her name is Isabella and she appears to be single. The women all find it odd that Isabella has moved into this family neighborhood. She has no children and no partner that they know of. Why is she renting the house, instead of owning it? What is her mysterious job? Why is she so fascinated by Essie? Essie and Isabelle begin to develop a close friendship and the other women begin to voice their disapproval. It becomes clear that Isabelle moving to their neighborhood is no accident. Her presence threatens to bring some very shocking secrets to light.
Just who is Isabelle and why is she so obsessed with Essie and her daughters?
MY THOUGHTS
This book was awesome. I read it in just one week and it's definitely a "stay up too late to keep turning the page" kind of a novel. It's a very compelling drama that centers around families, the marital relationships, and the mother-child relationships.
The main theme in this book is child kidnapping from a hospital. I don't want to go into too much detail about this because I don't want to ruin the plot twists for you.
The character development is very well done. I had a good picture in my mind of each mom, dad and child depicted in this book.
Other themes in this book are: infidelity and the effects it has on marriages; depression in men; past histories of people we think we know and really don't; forgiveness, family ties; and something I had never heard of before (and I took abnormal psychology and other psychology courses on the graduate level!) called Genetic Sexual Attraction. This was something I found to be very believable and added quite the mystery to the plot. Of course by then I had somewhat figured out what was going on.
The book has a different voice for each chapter. Sometimes you are reading Ange's voice. Other times it's Frans or Essie's or Isabella's. Once in awhile it is Barbaras. This didn't get confusing though. I honestly didn't quite see the connection between each woman's family but it's the relationship between them and their husbands/children I think that the author wanted to portray. Each marriage deals with some tough issues and that is reality. Marriage isn't for wimps!
In my opinion, this book is appropriate for ages 17 and older. (due to some mature content).
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest I rate this a 9.
I would give it a perfect 10 but there were SO MANY editing mistakes. TONS. That's disappointing.
2 comments:
Hi Faith. This sounds like another good one. Thanks for the review!
This sounds good. I've read another book by this author called The Thinks We Keep, and really liked it so I'll put this on my library list.
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