An explosive new debut novel, I’d heard a lot about this book before I started to read it and I liked the premise; a seemingly normal suburban couple with a nasty secret about what they like to do in their spare time – abduct and murder young women. The male protagonist never reveals his name to us, in fact the only name we know him by is Tobias; even though we know this is a lie from the very start. Married to the love of his life, Millicent, with two teenage children, he is a disaffected tennis coach and seems a little bored with his oh-so-perfect life. Early on we know he’s up to no good when we find him out one night, fishing for their next victim -however quite quickly the tables turn and he ends up getting a bit of a shock when he finds out what Millicent has been up to for the last year.

For all the hype I heard, I should have realised. Described as ‘Dexter meets Mr and Mrs Smith’, well, I loved Dexter and hated Mr and Mrs Smith, and I kind of felt like that with this novel. I didn’t really like any of the characters so I didn’t get very invested in them. I saw the ‘big’ twist coming from very early on, and I felt that the main story arc, and the behaviour of the characters involved became more and more unlikely as the book went on. There were some quite major plot holes, and although I think it would translate really well to screen, I didn’t feel the latter half of the book quite matched up to the fast-paced start.

Overall, however, I did enjoy the writing style and the book is gripping in places – I read it over two days and even though I was suspending my disbelief in places, it kept my interest long enough to want to find out what happened.

Thanks to Netgalley for a copy of this book. This review is my honest and unbiased opinion.

3.5/5