This suspense follows Ted and Lily. The two meet on a flight and after having a few drinks, they play a game of truth where they can't lie to the other, no matter how small. When Ted reveals that his wife Miranda is cheating on him and that he could kill her for this betrayal, Lily offers to help. As their plan unfolds, the two of them also find there is a detective on the case and that they might have a harder time coming out of this alive than they originally expected.
Full disclosure: Bummer book review incoming. This was one of those books that I'd only heard good things about. It is constantly listed as people's favorite Peter Swanson read but I don't get the hype around this book at all. I was 100% on-board with the premise and even gave this time to sit on the shelf between when I first heard about this book and before picking it up to make sure it wasn't overhyped for me. However, this was one of those books where I was getting annoyed at most of the character's choices, plot points, and even Swanson's writing choices. I'm pretty bummed because I just wanted to love this as much as other people seem to love it.
I was initially intrigued by our two main characters. Their initial interaction and conversation does seem a bit fantastical since I can't imagine any real person having that conversation on an airplane, but I'm always down to give a thriller a bunch of leeway with this type of stuff. We do get a pretty good sense of these characters right at the opening...but then that's it. I didn't get more character development other than Ted wants his wife dead and Lily wants to help him kill her. As the characters go through some pretty significant events during the course of the book, I was expecting some character development. However, it just felt like Lily and Ted continued to be the same characters we met at the beginning with little to no added depth to their characters.
I love a good cat-and-mouse thriller but due to some plot/writing choices, I found this completely devoid of tension. There were a number of twists and reveals that I wasn't expecting, which was good. These reveals were pivot points in the plot where the tension and momentum that was building then had to completely stop in order for the plot to pivot. And these types of pivot points happened numerous times throughout the book which means that the momentum was starting and stopping instead of building consistently over the course of the story. The twists that happened were something I haven't seen in a lot of books so I do give Swanson points for that. These twists maybe could have worked if the other aspects of the book were more robust such as the characters, but it they didn't work for me.
I enjoyed the flashbacks we got of Lily's past way more than the current-day plot. I thought this past-timeline story was much more intriguing and tense. The connection to the current plot isn't clear at first and I was initially nervous that this was just another way to show us the same character detail we already know about Lily. However, I did enjoy the way Lily's past tied up to the ending of the book and left the door open a bit for more books. And while Swanson did recently release a sequel to this, I'm most likely not going to be picking it up.
Overall, I don't think there was anything truly bad about this book, but a good chunk of it was just not working for me. Great premise, but I didn't connect with the characters or plot execution. I wish I loved it as much as other people seem to.
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