A Good Marriage

A Good Marriage
Summary (from the publisher): Lizzie Kitsakis is working late when she gets the call. Grueling hours are standard at elite law firms like Young & Crane, but they’d be easier to swallow if Lizzie was there voluntarily. Until recently, she’d been a happily underpaid federal prosecutor. That job and her brilliant, devoted husband Sam—she had everything she’d ever wanted. And then, suddenly, it all fell apart.

No. That’s a lie. It wasn’t sudden, was it? Long ago the cracks in Lizzie’s marriage had started to show. She was just good at averting her eyes.

The last thing Lizzie needs right now is a call from an inmate at Rikers asking for help—even if Zach Grayson is an old friend. But Zach is desperate: his wife, Amanda, has been found dead at the bottom of the stairs in their Brooklyn brownstone. And Zach’s the primary suspect.

As Lizzie is drawn into the dark heart of idyllic Park Slope, she learns that Zach and Amanda weren’t what they seemed—and that their friends, a close-knit group of fellow parents at the exclusive Grace Hall private school, might be protecting troubling secrets of their own. In the end, she’s left wondering not only whether her own marriage can be saved, but what it means to have a good marriage in the first place.

Review: I received an advance reader's edition of this novel from HarperCollins. 

Struggling to cope with a slowly unraveling marriage and a new position with an elite law firm, Lizzie is shocked to get a late night call from Zach, an old law school friend who is in jail after his wife Amanda was found dead at the bottom of the stairs in their Brooklyn home. As Lizzie is sucked into the case, she finds that Zach and Amanda's lives, and the lives of her friends, were not what they seemed. 

This novel certainly reeled me in and did an excellent job of building suspense. Alternating perspectives between Lizzie's investigation into the case and Amanda's perspective in the days leading up to her death. As the title suggests, this novel also focuses heavily on the theme of what makes a good marriage. Unfortunately, few, if any, of the couples covered within this book truly have happy partnerships. Furthermore, most of the characters have troubled backgrounds, many with traumatic and/or abusive childhoods.

There are a lot of different plot elements thrown into this novel, many of which are never fleshed out. Of course, part of this is to help build suspense and throw suspicion on different characters who might possibly be behind Amanda's death. Furthermore, I do wish Lizzie's relationship with her husband had been given more depth. However, overall I found this an entertaining and fast paced read.

Stars: 3

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