Review: The Girlfriend by Michelle Frances

Title: The Girlfriend

Author: Michelle Frances

Published: January 2018, Kensington Books

Format: ARC Paperback, 432 pages

Source: Publisher

Summary:

A girl. A boy. His mother. And the lie she’ll wish she’d never told.

The Girlfriend
by Michelle Frances is a gripping and chilling debut psychological
thriller, based on the fall-out following an unforgiveable lie. It looks
at the potentially charged relationship between girlfriend, boyfriend
and his mother, which most women can identify with, and locates it in an
extreme but believable setting.

Laura has it all. A successful
career, a long marriage to a rich husband, and a twenty-three year-old
son, Daniel, who is kind, handsome, and talented. Then Daniel meets
Cherry. Cherry is young, beautiful and smart but she hasn’t had the same
opportunities as Daniel. And she wants Laura’s life.

Cherry comes to the family wide-eyed and wants to be welcomed with open arms, but Laura suspects she’s not all that she seems.

When
tragedy strikes, an unforgiveable lie is told. It is an act of
desperation, but the fall-out will change their lives forever.

My thoughts: I read a lot of psychological thrillers – just putting that label on a book has me already eager to dig in. But with that, comes the problem that I find I’m reading a bit of the same old every once in a while…but not with this one. Michelle Frances has crafted this psychological thriller with undertones of a domestic drama and turned it into one addicting read!

This book starts with one heck of an intense, intriguing prologue. It gets you wondering just where this story is going and has you thinking all sorts of things as the book then moves back in time to where the beginning of these characters story. I will say that the first half of the book is a little slow, sort of like a slow burn as we see how all the players fit into this crazy story.

One of the stand-out features of this book are the characters and just how devious and manipulative they were. It was amazing how much you can come to dislike characters over the book of a book and still love the story. Watching these two women, who claim to love the same man – one his mother, one his girlfriend – was like watching a trainwreck…you don’t want to keep looking, but you can’t help it. You need to know how it is all going to play out.

The characters are so well-developed and drawn. There were times I disliked both Laura and Cherry intensely, yet there were also times I felt sympathy for them. And then there’s Daniel, who is just caught in the crossfire of all this scheming and manipulation. 

I found this book to keep me on edge all the way through. Especially once you reach the halfway point, where things reach a point where you cannot walk away without knowing how it is all going to play out. It’s crazy, twisted and the slow burn at the beginning just adds to the overall tension, especially when it’s ramped up towards the end. 

I am beyond shocked that this is the author’s debut novel and at the same time extremely thrilled that it has already been optioned for film – I think this will definitely make a great movie! This is an author to watch…and I can’t wait to see what comes next from her.