This is a tale of dark and twisted relationships. I haven't heard of the author but was attracted by the blurb about the facade of an idyllic life. I find it interesting, in real life and fiction, to glimpse what's going on under the surface.

This is definitely not a joyous read. It's exceptionally well written, atmospheric in the sense of scene setting and building tension. It's unsettling which shows the strength of the writing and I wanted to know how it would all work through. Possibly not a book to get into if you're feeling a little low, but I'm impressed by the plot and on the whole the characters, totally unlike able, are convincing.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.

This tells the story of a couple living a seemingly idyllic life, but the flaws in the main characters' lives soon appear. It is told from the perspective of three characters which works well. None of them are likeable, but all are vividly described which brings the book to life. Dismal but mesmerising.

I thoroughly enjoyed this ,right up mys street ,awful people all insecure ,underdeveloped emotionally and no real strength if character in any of them
All greedy all about themselves ,
Admired how the author did take a risk and deliver the ultimate crime and not shy away from it as u cd imagine one of em doing such a thing therefore gets a four star from me which is rare ,but did thinknwas a brave choice and prob meant a lot of people were split ,but we need to take risks or lalmbooks arevthe same in this genre and this cd have been like so many before,,however not one character u warm to u just find yourself more and more taken aback by how dreadfull they all are as people and can understand why they are all in this dynamic as it feeds them
I like the location description and felt like I was innthat house with them
Thanks netgalley and publishers ,I will watch for the next novel by this author

This was a gripping drama, told from the point of view of the 3 protagonists - an idea I liked. It certainly kept me turning the pages, although some of it was a bit too dark and disturbing for my liking.

What a depressing story. If you are intend reading this book, be prepared for a very dark story. Almost a bit dreamlike the three main characters Merry, Frank and Sam tell us the story. Their perception of things is quite different. All three have their flaws and even serious mental problems. Nobody is sympathetic. In fact, they are all three very dreadful and disturbed personalities.

Sam gets his pregnant wife Merry to move with him to a small house outside Stockholm. Sam has just lost his job, although he tells everyone that he wants to change his career. Merry has had many different jobs. Basically, she drives through life and lets her respective partner influence her wherever she is going. She is a passively aggressive character. She likes other people to make decisions for her. Sam and Merry pretend to each other that they are the perfect little family with their little son and their nature-loving life in Sweden. Then Frank, Merry’s childhood friend, comes to visit them for a few weeks. The two have a toxic relationship. They bring out the worst in each other.

I found the story very depressing. Especially from the beginning I felt so incredibly sorry for the little boy. Whether Merry suffers from depression or lack of empathy, I do not know. All three characters are disturbed in their own way. And their relationship to each other is anything but friendly. The story is really appalling, but as a reader I was spellbound and kept reading. It's not a fun read. But as a creepy and atmospheric psycho thriller, the book actually works very well.

This is one of those books I found a bit ‘meh’ - admiringly it did pick up a bit towards the middle of the book but I still felt a lot of the time it kind of meandered on pointlessly.

As the book begins it seems Merry and her husband Sam have it all. A lovely home in Sweden, a happy marriage and a beautiful baby boy. However appearances are not always what they seem and when Merry’s best friend Frank comes to visit cracks appear to show. Tragedy then strikes and it is clear that there are lots of lies floating about.

I finished the book but i wouldn’t go as far as saying I enjoyed it.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for an advanced read copy of the book.

Merr, Sam and Conor are the perfect family in the perfect place. Merry adores domestic life: baking, gardening, caring for her infant son. Sam, formerly an academic, is perusing a new career as a filmmaker. Sometimes they can't believe how lucky they are. When Merry's childhood friend Frank visits, she immediately becomes part of the family. Frank and Merry are more like sisters than best friends. But Frank then sees things others might miss.

This psychological thriller is told by multiple points of view. Merry and Sam have recently moved from Manhattan to Sweden with their infant son, Conor. Frank (Frances), Merry's childhood friend comes to visit and does not believe the facade being presented to her. Once Frank arrives the tension slowly builds and the fairytale family life we are lead to believe, just might not be true. There are some parts of this story that might upset some readers. With their odd behaviour, cruel actions and being frequently manipulative, the characters are unlikable. This is quite a dark and disturbing read.

I would like to thank NetGalley, HQ and the author Michelle Sacks for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A great page turner. Atmospheric. Deals with something quite dark , but in a readable way. Enjoyed this and would recommend.

A dark, destructive and dismal psychological noir thriller.

Well- written with a simple, compelling plot and vivid, distinctive characters who make an impact, yet the characters are soulless and cruel, and it's impossible to empathise with them. The plot themes centre around, infidelity, domestic abuse, child abuse and toxic relationships. It is not for everyone; I wouldn't have read it if I'd known it featured child abuse.

In the style of a Scandinavian thriller, it compels at the beginning, but is overly complicated as it progresses, slowing the pace. Short chapters from multi-points of view help the pacing, and the twists are memorable. Not something to read if you're feeling down because this will drag you down further.

The story writing skill is evident, but the subject matter isn't for me.

I received a copy of this book from HQ via NetGalley in return for an honest review.

This book had me hooked at the beginning. The initial setting of the perfect family life and home were good because you knew it was all going to go wrong and was setting up for a great story.
But about halfway through I realised I didn't like any of the main characters (I have no idea how the two women were still frinds as they obviously couldn't stand each other) and actually felt sad for the baby. Add into that the fact that the initial feeling that hooked me at the start had gone and it was actually a struggle to finish.

This is a suspenseful, creepy book and I really enjoyed it.
I liked the different points of view and thought the characters were well written.
It’s a dark story about family, friendship and the facade that people wear to hide the truth of their lives.

Well, that was dark and more than a little disturbing.
This book starts out by painting the picture of a perfect life, with some sinister undertones that quickly become more obvious. At first it's just little details. "Sometimes I like to carve out messages in the dust. HELP I wrote this morning, for no particular reason." Then it escalates, until it can best be described through this quote from the book: "There's nothing wrong with the picture except everything."

The first thing I noticed when I started reading this was the unusual format. There are no quotation marks used, which I think immediately sets our characters up as unreliable narrators. When there's no quotes to say "oh, yes, this is exactly what was said," you can't trust that what you're being given is truth, and not just that character's warped version of events. And when you can't trust your narrators, that leaves you trying to piece things together yourself from the clues they give you. I think this is a pretty good setup for a mystery/thriller, and it certainly had me intrigued.

Speaking of our characters, it's safe to say that they are all horrible people with ugly secrets. There's Merry and Sam, the "perfect" couple, parents to baby boy Connor (possibly the only innocent character in this story!), and Merry's childhood friend Frances. Frank, as she's known, is the catalyst that really sets off the events in this book, when she comes to visit the couple's idyllic Swedish home. It's almost impossible to feel sympathy for any of them - I felt I was only attached to them out of a morbid curiosity to see what horrible thing they would do to each other next. I don't want to spoil this twisty and sinister plot for anyone, but when something terrible happens you're ultimately left wondering who couldn't have done it.

This is a dark story about bad people, and I found it very compelling, thanks to the urge to see what the characters would do next. There are plenty of plot twists, and though the ending was strange and I know it won't be to everyone's taste, I found it quite satisfying. This was an interesting read, and I would recommend it if you like mystery/thrillers or anything sinister.

The book takes us on to Sweden and the ‘idyllic’ life of Sam, Merry and their baby Connor. Everything changes when Merry’s childhood friend, Frances (known as Frank) turns up to stay. The story takes us through the cracks in the lifestyle with Frank in the middle. Few twists and turns along the way but a very good book, well written and you really want to find out what happens in the end.

An interesting premise - "happy wife, happy life" ex-pat US couple combined with Scandinavian scenery, questionable friendships and post-partum troubles. Told from the perspective of each of the three central characters I found this very hard to get into. I didn't warm to the characters and the lack of variation of writing style meant that I was forever checking who was narrating a particular chapter.

Disturbing to a fault but lacking the pace that would have guaranteed it as a page-turner I just didn't find the book engaging. At times it was disconnected and the lack of nuance meant that any empathy was hard-won.

I struggled to finish this one but thank Netgalley, the author and the publisher for giving me the chance.

Merry and her husband Sam live a seemingly idyllic life in a remote part of Sweden, having moved there from the US to start a new life with their baby boy, Conor. What on the surface appears to be perfect is soon revealed to be something quite different - a carefully constructed false reality, where nobody is telling the whole truth. Just as we curate our social media feeds to give a certain impression of ourselves to the world, these characters do it with their whole lives. Merry acts the perfect mother, making homemade baby food and keeping house impeccably. Sam seems to be the devoted husband. The arrival of Frank, Merry’s childhood best friend, creates tension as the masks the characters are wearing begin to slip. When things take a tragic turn, the reader is left unsure which character (if any) they can trust.

It’s a compelling story and beautifully written, but there’s another powerful dimension at play here, as the author forces us to confront how the characters’ behaviour echoes our own lives, and the stories we tell ourselves as others about who we are. In this story it’s taken to an extreme, but it remains a powerful reflection on the strange competitiveness of modern life.

Sam and Merry leave the USA for a new life in Sweden with their baby son. Sam goes out to work whilst Merry stays at home looking after the house and child. All seems fine with this arrangement but we soon discover that Sam is very controlling and Merry very resentful. Then Merry's old friend Frank comes to stay and things go from bad to worse. Why Merry and Frank are even friends is beyond my comprehension as they seem to dislike each other intensely. I didn't care for any of the three main characters and the only person. I had any sympathy for was the baby.

This book takes in very dark places, be warned.
It is about an American couple, Sam and Merry who moved to Sweden after Sam inherits a house from a Swedish great aunt. Their new life appears to be idyllic, Sam tries to establish a new career while Merry becomes the perfect housewife and even makes her own jam. Soon after they have a son called Conor.

Then Frank arrives. She has been friends with Merry since childhood and they have apparently been as close as sisters. She immediately joins them in the domestic and rural bliss but she realises that there is something wrong.

I can't say more without giving the plot away but it is a complex group of people and it is no surprising that things don't end well. The story is told in turns by Sam, Merry and Frank and honestly there are no heroes in this book. But it is a character driven thriller and as such it works really well. But stay away if you like your thrillers light and pleasant with clear boundaries between good and evil, this is not that type of book. This is heavier and a lot more shocking.
All this unsavoury stuff happens in the beautiful and well described Swedish countryside.

This book has all the makings of a great thriller, but struggles from the get-go to really entice and hook the reader into carrying on with the story. Its pseudo-Handmaid's Tale themes and the strange tone that wasn't quite creepy but also not thrilling at the same time don't make the best mix. After a while, you become very irritated by the central characters. Set in the secluded Swedish countryside, the story follows a couple and their young child. The husband is an unsuccessful filmmaker who forces his wife to stay in the house and look after their son, rather than working, despite the fact that she's completely qualified. She also does not like children, particularly her son. Maybe it's post-partum depression, but to me it just felt like she was at the complete beck and call of this selfish husband and my inner feminist was screaming at me to stop reading. I struggled my way through this, and though it was an interesting premise to start off with, it really was not a well written book.

I didn’t like any of the characters and could not understand the relationship between Merry and Frank as they just seemed to completely hate each other so why would you keep in contact? The attempt at “setting the scene” of a wonderfully fulfilled life in Sweden failed at the first base for me as one year of trying ang testing with plants is nowhere near enough time to learn enough to go almost self sufficient. Add to that the odd lack of punctuation and I’m afraid I have to say I did not enjoy this one at all.

A very different and at times uncomfortable read which I could not put down. Just when you think you know where the story is headed it takes a turn down an even more dark and twisted path. It is the kind of book that will haunt me for a long time.