This domestic suspense follows a group of people living in the Upper East Side of NYC where keeping up appearances is paramount. But when the anonymous confession site UrbanMyth is hacked, all secrets are released - including some worth killing for.
I loved the set up and premise for this book, but overall the execution wasn't for me. Domestic suspense are real hit or miss for me and but I think for fans of the genre, this would be a fun read. I do think this book stays true to the premise, but I was just expecting it to go darker than it did. I'd categorize this as mild suspense, at best. All the pieces were there, in theory, but the spark was missing. I didn't believe that there was anything really at stake with these characters so the suspense elements fell flat for me. I spent a lot of the book guessing what twist would happen next only to have almost none of those twisty moments actually happened. There were some fun moments - but mostly this was just a middle of the road domestic suspense for me.
The characters in this are perfect for the setting and premise. They are all a little over the top when it comes to their actions and reactions to some of these situations. To be fair, I've never been anywhere close to being in this world so maybe these characters are 100% accurate. However, reading from the outside - this book felt like the definition of Rich People Problems. We have it all from the parent overly involved in their child's school to ensure they get into the best boarding schools to the bored socialite. The character interactions were by far my favorite part of this story - especially the ones where there's a lot of subtext to the conversation happening. These were exactly the type of interactions I was expecting based on the premise and I thought they were really well done. I would sometimes get the characters a little mixed up at the beginning of the book because the characters didn't have very distinct voices.
I liked the way the UrbanMyth site was used in the plot, but wish it had played an even bigger role. I wanted to see all levels of secrets revealed and wanted to see how the characters react to them. We see a lot of characters using and checking the site before it was hacked and I was expecting even more of that once the hack happened. However, the hacking reveal was a little anti-climatic for me. From the premise, I was expecting major fall out and consequences from these secrets no longer being anonymous but I didn't feel like that was used to the biggest impact it could have been. We do get some blackmail threats, but I didn't feel like the characters were developed enough for me to actually care about the potential fallout of the blackmail.
The ending felt a little haphazard and scattered. I think the pieces all came together alright, but the execution didn't feel tight enough for a domestic suspense. I really like my suspense reads to be super twisty and have all the threads be very interconnected so we get a ton of surprise reveals. The ending to this felt like it wanted to go in that direction, but I didn't think it had nearly enough substance to work with. I don't think we had enough characters or enough character development for there to be enough twists to reveal to the reader.
Overall, I would categorize this as a light domestic suspense. I thought the premise sounded great but just had different expectations that what it provided. This felt low stakes and fun enough to be a vacation read but it just wasn't exactly what I was looking for.
Thanks to NetGalley and Random House Ballantine for the ARC
Publication date was May 9, 2023
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