Emily's Book Reviews

Another crazy story by my girl Freida.

Let’s start with a synopsis. All of my book reviews will include a semi-detailed summary, so spoilers galore ahead.

We have our two main characters. Sylvia, who is down on her luck and jobless, has a *hero* experience when she saves a woman from choking at a restaurant. This whole escapade is noticed by Adam, who then offers Sylvia a job: he needs her to take care of his allegedly disabled wife, Victoria, who was in a terrible accident. She can’t walk, feed herself, dress herself, and any speech she does have is slurred and hard to understand. Adam appears every inch the doting husband devastated over the state of his wife. And, in true Freida fashion, he just so happens to be totally gorgeous.

The primary perspective shift we get throughout the story is between Sylvia and a diary Victoria had written before her accident. While Sylvia see Adam as a husband devastated by his wife’s injury, Victoria’s journal portrays him as emotionally abusive and downright mean. As we move through the plot, different characters offer different perspectives on Victoria and Adam’s relationship, making it hard to determine who’s being truthful and who’s the real bad guy.

Regardless of the varying stories she hears, they don’t appear to upset Sylvia too much, as she soon starts a sexual relationship with Adam, right under Victoria’s nose.

Sylvia and Victoria bond as Sylvia reads her diary. She learns about the handsome paramedic Mack, who was clearly in love with her and who never really liked Adam. And Victoria starts to try and speak to Sylvia, repeating one phrase that stood out to me because it didn’t make any sense: “Glen head.”

If you do not want to know the big plot twists, stop reading!!!

Tired of being attacked by Victoria whenever he tries to giver her her medications, Adam allows Sylvia to take on the responsibility. Now that she suspects Adam isn’t being entirely truthful about the state of his wife’s health, Sylvia doesn’t give Victoria the injections.

Adam has Sylvia convinced that Victoria is the bad guy and that he pushed her down the stairs in self defense when Victoria threatened him. Then they turn and see Victoria in her wheelchair holding a gun, Adam begs her to put the gun down. Sylvia, scared for her life and the life of her employer lover, lunges at her. The chair goes backwards and down the steps and they tumble down together. And just like that, Victoria is dead. When the paramedics and cops show up, an old co-worker of Victoria’s named Drew treats Sylvia. During their conversation, Drew brings up the handsome paramedic, Mack, who used to be in love with Victoria. Used to be in love. And just kind of…disappeared after Victoria and Adam got together. Oh, and his real name? Glen MacNeil.

Drew then conveniently notices how much snow there is and says, “Even your shed is buried.” Glen head? More like “Glen Shed.”

Sylvia sneaks away to go investigate and has to stomp through feet of snow to get there. She quickly detects a scent that lets her know Adam is the true villain behind it all. Adam catches Sylvia while she’s investigating and, in true evil dude form, he starts monologuing about why he did it. He admits to killing Mack and Irina, and that Sylvia helped him finish what he started with Victoria. And just as he’s about to add one more body to his pile, Sylvia’s ex-boyfriend Freddy shows up and knocks Adam unconscious.

The final plot twist? Maggie, the cleaning woman employed by Adam, was in on his schemes the whole time. She helped him clean up the mess after he killed Mack. She lied about Victoria being crazy. And at the very end, after Maggie drops all that information on Sylvia, Maggie starts to choke. And this time? Sylvia does nothing to help.

My Review

I liked it. Overall, it was a good book with a few interesting twists along the way. My first instinct about Adam turned out to be correct. It all seemed a little too convenient and he seemed a little too much like the perfect husband. But when I started to get to the sections of Victoria’s diary, I had to wonder if this was going to turn into “Gone Girl” with a fake, planned out diary. When the altercation on the staircase happens, I’ll admit I was thrown. I genuinely thought, “Wow, I was wrong. Adam isn’t the bad guy.”

But then in true Freida fashion, I was misled. Turns out, Adam is just as sleazy as I thought he was. Not only did he try to kill his wife, but he was banging anyone that moved and gaslighting them along away. I wasn’t sure about Mack’s fate, but it made sense when it was explained.

On GoodReads, I gave it four stars. Not as good as Housemaid, but I enjoyed the ride.

What did you think? Feel free to leave a comment! I’d love to hear your thoughts!