What Lies Between Us - John Marrs

 

This domestic suspense/thriller follows two women who live in the same house. The two have dinner together every other night and then Nina helps Maggie back to her room upstairs and re-fastens the chain around her ankle. The two women have a long history together and Maggie has done irreparable harm to Nina and is now paying the price at Nina's hand. The two women are keeping secrets from each other and they would do anything to keep the other from finding out.

CW/TW: teenage pregnancy, miscarriage, grooming, adult/minor relationship, drug use

 This was a really fun read that I really think benefits from the pretty vague synopsis.  Going into this book with the least information possible was really great and I would say that if the synopsis interests you at all, to just go ahead and read it.  I've read so many thrillers that I'm pretty familiar with the usual story beats and pacing.  I prefer to sit down and read for long chunks of time so there are quite a few times that I'll have a whole afternoon to myself and will finish a book in one sitting.  However, for most thrillers, I would say they don't hit the 'unable to put down' level of intriguing until about the 75% mark.  If I have a mystery/suspense/thriller and I'm at that 75% mark, I won't pick it back up until I know I have the time to finish it.  In this case, however, I was so drawn into the story and the reveals that I did end up staying up way too late and reading the whole book in one sitting.  This was my first John Marrs book and I really enjoyed it so I'll be picking up more for sure.  Since there are so few details given in the synopsis, I'll do my best to keep the rest of this review as vague as possible while still trying to explain my thoughts so this might be a bit on the short side.

 I've said it before, but really enjoy my thrillers to have some sort of split timeline or flashback elements to them.  I think it is a really great mechanic to build tension and reveal information without the book feeling too info-dumpy.  In this case, we get to see Nina and Maggie in 3 distinct times - 25ish years ago, 2 years ago, and present day.  Within these times, we see Nina and Maggie separately so we can really get to know them and see how things have changed over time.  It was especially interesting because the plot in the present seems to have hit a sort of standstill where Nina and Maggie have fallen into a routine of sorts and there isn't much deviation to that routine.  So most of the action and momentum in the story comes from the past timelines (the present plot does pick up speed in the last 1/3 of the book). Another aspect of the past timelines is how great the character work is during these flashbacks.  I find some 'flashbacks' end up feeling more like the present day character remembering back to the past which can cause them to sort of color those past experiences with their current perspectives.  In this story, however, the characters and their voices are still recognizable as Nina and Maggie, but they are different enough from the Nina and Maggie of present day that it really reads like a true flashback which really helped my overall immersion and enjoyment of the story.

I loved the dynamic between Nina and Maggie and how the reader comes to understand the different aspects of their relationship as more details are revealed.  I found myself rooting for Nina and Maggie on different occasions.  Marrs did a great job really slowly revealing details that would shift the reader's sympathies from one character to the other all the way to the end. Neither character is all good or all bad in this story which I think helps it stay grounded and come across as a more believable story.  We switch POV between Nina and Maggie and there were a few times we got to see pretty much the same moment from both POVs which was really interesting, especially once we started getting into the real juicy details of their history. I thought both women were extremely well-developed characters.  We are really deep into both of their heads and I really liked how we got their reasoning for their actions and while maybe I wouldn't have done the same things they did, the decisions felt authentic to their characters.  This story, at the base, is the relationship between these two women and how it has evolved over the decades and, in my opinion, the only way to make a story like that compelling and intriguing

The one thing I would have liked to be different would be to see more of Nina and Maggie during the time in between the 25 years ago and 2 years ago that we get.  We get little details at what happened during that time, but I think it would have been beneficial for the reader to see some of those.  The events 25 years ago were pretty significant and I think they would have had a long term impact on both women.  I wanted to see directly how those events changed the women, even in small ways.  For example, we are told that Maggie hasn't had a boyfriend in all that time, but did she ever go out on even a date?  Did her friends try to set her up?  Was Maggie okay with this or did she want to have a boyfriend but couldn't for some reason?  These sorts of scenes would have helped to bridge the gap between the 25 years ago and 2 years ago and I think would have made the story feel more complete.

I'll admit, I was a little iffy on the ending at first, but after thinking about it for a few days, I think it was a really appropriate way to end the story.  My initial knee-jerk reaction was that I didn't like it because I wanted to see more, I wanted to see the next scene and the reactions to the information we learn right at the end.  I think that sort of reaction really speaks volumes to how invested and interested I was in the story.  So while the ending is a little open, I think we get an appropriate conclusion to Nina and Maggie's story which is what we were following all along.  While this story felt more on the suspense side, there were a few twists along the way that I thought worked well.  The big twist toward the end that sort of kicked off the events of the story 25 years prior was really obvious and I found the foreshadowing almost a little too over the top.  I really don't mind if I guess the twists in a mystery/thriller ahead of time, but I really get annoyed when it feels too obvious or like the author is really holding the reader's hand.  For example, there were a lot of vague but obviously heavy statements along the lines of "she could never know the truth" and "I could answer her questions but then she'd know" and the context in which those heavy statements were made I felt really gave away the big twist.  The one saving grace of that big twist is that if the reader does figure it out early (like I did), the character in question still doesn't know so the tension is still in the story and we are just waiting for the character to put the pieces together. 

Overall, this was a really immersive and intriguing domestic suspense/thriller.  I really enjoyed the character work and the way each reveal would change my understanding of the plot.  I do wish we had gotten some more scenes in between our main time periods and the ending wasn't immediately my favorite but I can already feel this is going to be a book I remember and recommend going forward.