Synopsis From Book
Emily is a mess. Emily Proudman just lost her acting agent, her job, and her apartment in one miserable day.
Emily is desperate. Scott Denny, a successful and charismatic CEO, has a problem that neither his business acumen nor vast wealth can fix. Until he meets Emily.
Emily is perfect. Scott offers Emily a summer job as a housekeeper on his remote, beautiful French estate. Enchanted by his lovely wife, Nina, and his eccentric young daughter, Aurelia, Emily falls headline into this oasis of wine-soaked days by the pool. But soon Emily realizes that Scott and Nina are hiding dangerous secrets, and if she doesn't play along, the consequences could be deadly.
Thoughts Before Reading
Every time I read this synopsis I cannot wait to dive into this book! It sounds amazing and so fun! I need to know what happens to Emily! This is an ARC, advanced reading copy. I was lucky enough to sign up for one a couple months ago and I've had the arc about a month now and I've been meaning to jump into ti but I've been doing a lot of other challenges but now is the time to jump into it. So far the book has over 800 reviews on GoodReads and the rating is over 4 stars so I'm really curious to see how I fall on the spectrum. It sounds intense! I'm going to try to do a book aesthetic as well as halfway through check-in and final thoughts, so let's see what happens. I'll add whatever pictures I get of the book on here too!
Halfway Through Thoughts
I'm not sure how I feel about the book yet. When I read thrillers I tend to get more into the book when I listen to the audio version than when I read it. I can just get more into the story that way. But this was an ARC and I've been wanting to read it before it comes out so I've started reading it and I'm not really sure what is going on. I think it is supposed to be a thriller but I just keep question everything! I'm almost halfway through the book so there are more questions than there are answers right now but I'm starting to think that parts of the book might be based in the past and others are in the present day. Mostly because of Scott's mom is why I think that, mostly because of how they talk about Nina and Aurelia. There is just a big disconnect between Emily's scenes and Scott's scenes now versus how it was at the beginning of the book. During the beginning, the two were pretty connected between both scenes and it ran really fluid. But now I think it is all starting to unravel. This is all my thinking while reading not spoilers. As I started the book I really thought that Scott and Emily were going to have an affair but since I've been reading it I don't know what's going to happen or what is even happening anymore. Scott's scenes seem like they have nothing going on with Nina, Aurelia, and Emily anymore ever since Emily went to stay with them in France. So I'm really curious about what's going to happen in the book.
I really don't know if I like it or not yet. The book itself has really short chapters which I love because I love flying through them. But the story itself I don't know if it is for me. Now I thought the same thing while reading The Wife Between Us by Greer Henricks and Sarah Pekkanen and that is now one of my all-time favorite books. I'm hoping this one goes in the same direction but I definitely need to finish it in order to see what happens. I'm just too curious to finish it instead of DNFing it, but right now I'm really bored with it. If I wasn't so curious about what happens I would stop reading it.
After Thoughts
Well, I finished this book. I was so thrilled to read this book when I read about it on Facebook a few months ago and was so excited when I got an ARC of it! It started off interesting with the book setting up the world, but then it really crashed and burned for me. I want to mention that I don't normally read thrillers however there are some that I really adore, such as The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. Even with that book, I didn't love it starting off but when the twists and turns started unfolding I fell in love with the book and then looking back through it all trying to figure out how I missed stuff is where I got most of my fun. I started thinking that maybe I would have the same feelings towards this book as I did with that one. Well, I didn't. I was really just bored from the start but I was interested. So by the time that I got to the part that I really just couldn't stand anymore I was already 2/3s of the book in and I was obsessed with figuring out how it ends. I was so sure there was going to be an affair, but there wasn't. Pretty much everything I thought was going to happen didn't, and that really is okay with me and how I actually prefer it but I just got so freaking bored with this book. I was afraid that my big reading mood was going to dissipate into a reading slump. I ended up plowing through the end of the book last night and the ending just fell really flat for me. I wasn't satisfied with how it all unfolded. I didn't make a book aesthetic for this one. But I did make a rating one. And to be honest it took me a little bit to write this because I wasn't sure how to write down my feelings towards it other than just boredom. I wanted to make sure it wasn't just me since I don't normally go for thrillers but even looking through the ratings on Goodreads I don't think I'm alone.
Right now on Goodreads, the book has an overall rating of 4 stars. This is another reason I got really excited because this is really good rating and the book already has almost 1,500 reviews. So I was looking at them after I finished the book and really examined them. I typically only look at the star rating because I don't want any spoilers or how other people think about the book to determine my own views. But now looking at the reviews most of the star ratings are 4 stars (46%), but there are some 1-3 star ratings so I looked into those first. People were saying things like it was boring, the main character is very problematic (so true by the way because if she wasn't so gullible she wouldn't have ended up in her situations), very predictable, and that the twists really didn't deliver. All of these things I completely agreed with. So just curious to see what the 4-star people were saying I looked at those reviews too because I wanted to know why these people loved this book so much. They also say that this book is predictable and that it struggled with its own identity but overall they enjoyed it. Overall they really found it as an enjoyable read. So I get it, but I just don't have the same feelings towards it. I'm happy I got it and that I read it, I just didn't love it like I was hoping I would.
I was able to make the book fit in the June readathon that I'm doing and it even fit into one of the challenges! The challenge I got it to fit on was the Howler, which meant the book's characters have to face the consequences of their actions. That hit this book to a T! Not only was Emily the one that figured out everything that was going on but Scott had been living with his wife and all of messy life ever since they got married. He had to live with his consequences full-on, but I wish we would've gotten more of the aftermath of what she did since the book spent so much time building this up just for it to fall pretty flat and left a lot of stuff out.
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