September 7, 2020
A traumatic car accident has left 45-year-old Diana Sparrow, the unreliable narrator of much of this twisty psychological thriller from the pseudonymous Hardy (Little Secrets, as Megan Hart), unable to remember much of the last half year of her life, but she knows something’s amiss. In particular, she’s aware her husband, Jonathan, is lying to her and is having an affair. Chapters narrated by her estranged friend, Valerie
, reveal that Jonathan’s affair is with Valerie. A third narrator, the handsome and mysterious Cole
, who thinks Diana is beautiful, arranges to run into her at a coffee shop and strikes up an acquaintance. Cole knows more about Diana than he lets on. The tension rises as it becomes clear that Jonathan and his mother are scheming to gaslight Diana, to whom more and more odd things occur, such as discovering her car intact after Jonathan told her it was totaled in the accident. Will Diana be able to stay sane? Readers will eagerly turn the pages to find out. Hardy does an expert job keeping the emotional heat high. Agent: Jessica Faust, Bookends Literary.
Starred review from September 1, 2020
A middle-aged woman sidelined by a horrific accident finds even sharper pains waiting on the other side of her recuperation in this expert nightmare by Hardy, familiar to many readers as Megan Hart, author of All the Secrets We Keep (2017), etc. Five months ago, while she was on her way to the hospital with an ailing gallbladder, Diana Sparrow's car hit a deer on a rural Pennsylvania road. When she awoke, she was minus her gallbladder, two working collarbones (and therefore two functioning arms), and her memory. During a recovery that would've been impossible without the constant ministrations of Harriett Richmond, the mother-in-law who's the real reason Diana married her husband, Jonathan, Diana's discovered that Jonathan has been cheating on her with her childhood friend Valerie Delagatti. Divorce is out of the question: Diana's grown used to the pampered lifestyle the prenup she'd signed would snatch away from her. Every day is filled with torments. She slips and falls in a pool of wine on her kitchen floor she's sure she didn't spill herself. At the emergency room, her credit card and debit card are declined. She feels that she hates oppressively solicitous Harriett but has no idea why. Her sessions with her psychiatrist fail to heal her rage at her adoptive mother, an addict who abandoned her then returned only to disappear again and die an ugly death. Even worse, her attempts to recover her lost memory lead to an excruciatingly paced series of revelations. Val says Diana asked her to seduce Jonathan. Diana realizes that Cole, a fellow student in her watercolor class, isn't the stranger she'd thought he was. Where can this maze of deceptions possibly end? One of those rare thrillers whose answers are even more scarifying than its mysteries.
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