I Really enjoyed this book about female relationships with different backgrounds and how everything evolves and is not as it seems on face value or social media. I raced through the book desperate to understand the outcome. Well recommended and I look forward to reading more of the authors books in the future.

I imagine that as an author it must be very difficult to write an easy to read page turner, and I mean it as a compliment when I say Ms Bose achieved this. The characters and plot are well written and I could understand people's motives even if I thought they were wrong (Lauren with Sean!) and it finished as all good books should, with a very satisfying ending. Thank you to netgalley and Penguin Books for an advance copy of this book

This was a brilliant thriller, not something I’d usually pick up but I’m so glad I did, this kept getting better and better as the story progressed. A novel about a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business, gossip is rife and everyone is willing to air their neighbours’ dirty laundry… This novel surrounds a woman who’s found dead in her home which then follows the events building up to that moment as we await the reveal. All throughout, secrets are unraveled and affairs are spewed out because like Mary Alice Young once said, “trust is a fragile thing…”. Disha Bose set this novel up perfectly with an instant hooking plot line and a strong willed character who despite everything "needed to show she was in control, even though she wasn’t anymore" as she cleverly plants hints at critical moments to foreshadow the inevitable outcome. The most intriguing part were the characters, all desperate to prove how better they were compared to each other. Disha flipped typical stereotypes, there was no helpless woman waiting for a white knight, she set up a course of marriages where women were no longer weak in the knees. There was this constant mirage between the way each couple’s marriage appears to their neighbours and then the reality of the fractured relationship and unfaithful partners. Affairs, marriages and friendships are all pushed to a breaking point, playing into the power and affect of paranoia when trust is broken so easily. I thoroughly enjoyed the tension and anticipation that Bose created, no one is clear when everyone has a motive… What really stood out about this novel for me was the way it ended, everyone is at some fault and with no one taking responsibility, they ironically shared the responsibility and the weight of their shameful secrets which made for a “cruel joke” as the final piece to the puzzle fits into place. I really liked the way all the plot lines were set up and how they tied with each other smoothly. The different perspectives and each person’s version of events made it such an interesting read. The cyclical structure was a clever touch, the novel starting and ending with the moment the body is found at the bottom of the stairway, now with all the secrets exposed to the reader… Everyone and everything is a facade. Many thanks to Netgalley and Penguin General for sending me this ARC in exchange for a review.

Neighbourhood friendships can be wonderful or catastrophic and this book is about how good times can turn into bad times if one of the people “go rogue”. Ciera is married to Gerry and they have two children. Gerry is a sort of non event really in the book. Ceira married him for his money and a comfortable live but that was not working out so well. They live in a big house and she likes to be the centre of everyone’s world and takes what she wants. This leads to an affair with a neighbour, Sean. Sean is living with his partner Lauren and three children. Then in comes Mishti and Parth into the mix. This is an arranged marriage and not a happy one. Mishti becomes close to Ciera. Ciera uses that friendship to be unkind to Lauren. Is that because she is having an affair with Sean? Ciera makes her own money, which Gerry supposedly does not know about, being a blogger. The women in the village follow her on Instagram and Ciera for whatever reason makes it clear in a subtle way that Lauren is not in their fold. This causes so much anguish and distraction that Lauren becomes hyper sensitive to her surroundings and becomes very unhappy. As always with social media and alcohol Ciera posts something on Instagram which suddenly becomes toxic and the rest of the story you will have to read. All the characters in this book have their own issues and when mixed it makes you wonder who will crack first. I did enjoy this book but did feel it had a slow start. A little disappointed with the ending

Ciara, Mishti and Lauren three very different women but all mothers, in relationships that teetered on the brink. Were they friends? Perhaps not and there in lay the crux of the novel, the relationship between the three, the simmering undercurrents that in Bose’s capable hands slowly rose to the surface. I detested Ciara, the women who seemed to have it all, money, the perfect house, children, husband and a lucrative sideline in marketing herself as a yummy mummy on Instagram. Bose made her manipulative, selfish, cold with a willingness to steam roller anyone who stood in her way Mishti has an arranged marriage, a husband who treated her like a maid, there to feed him, look after him and provide him with a child. She was my favourite, quiet unassuming but with a steely determination that didn’t emerge until the latter parts of the novel. Lauren was your awkward bohemian, motherhood infused within her very being.. yet she was a loner shunned by the mothers in the village, her feud with Ciara, at the centre of it all. What nine could foresee was the ending, the path towards it as the simmering tensions and actions gravitas towards an unexpected ending. A great debut that I loved