The Couple in the Photo
The Couple in the Photo
By: Helen Cooper
“She feels like something dangerous. What she knows about me, about us. What she could destroy. I’ve been careless, taken my eye off what’s important, and things have gone too far.”
“My family, my kids. They can never, never know what I’ve done.”
When the first thing that happens in the book is the main character, Lucy, sees a coworker’s photo of a couple they met in the Maldives that appears to be her husband’s best friend with a woman who was not his wife, I worried that we found out too much too fast and it was going to be long and boring.
But luckily, I was wrong. There were many more knots and secrets to untangle as the story goes on.
I also appreciated that this wasn’t just a paranoid character trope. Lucy is more just curious and obsessed with finding the truth by actually looking and finding answers, not just sitting at home and speculating in her mind and wondering if she’s crazy.
That helped move the story along because Lucy kept discovering things and actually made some tough decisions to communicate with the police which I found surprising considering a lot of books I read.
The premise is this:
Adam & Lucy and Scott & Cora are two couples who are best friends. Adam, Scott, and Cora went to Leeds University together and have a history. That history comes to haunt them when Lucy finds out the woman in the photo with Scott— Juliet— was a girl who also went to school with them.
Then Juliet turns up dead in the Maldives- murdered. And Scott was supposedly just with her.
And then the coworker who showed her the photo finds herself in the hospital.
Lucy’s world comes crashing down when more and more secrets are revealed as she searches for the truth.
She might not like what she finds and whoever is hiding from her will do anything to keep those secrets hidden!
I will warn that the end of the book isn’t really a happy ending. It’s not necessarily unsatisfying but the characters are pretty dysfunctional and if you’re a ‘happy ending’ kind of book reader, you may not want to do this one.
I figured out the primary mystery at 30% (i.e. who was narrating the mystery POV sections and who the killer was) but there were other things that I wasn’t sure about throughout the book.
It’s not a high-octane thriller, but more of a suspicion-driven domestic thriller.
There was a decent amount of swearing, but most of the f-words were grouped together during times the characters found out bad news or got hurt and not in constant daily use like an adjective. Not great, but could have been worse.
Overall, a decent book that I would recommend.
Learning Corner
Cooper is a British author so of course here is my little learning corner. These are all food-related words I learned while reading this book:
Ribena: blackcurrant-based soft drink (carbonated and non); and comes in concentrate to be mixed with water
cheesy mash: cheesy mashed potatoes
Quavers: UK equivalent to a Cheeto; a cheesy airy chip named after the musical note- quaver (which is an eighth note); you can buy them on Amazon
malt loaf: a sweet bread served with butter
poppadoms: thin round Indian bread
[Content Advisory: 48 f-words, 15 s-words; an affair occurs but no sex scenes]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
This book just released December 5, 2023. You can order a copy of this book using my affiliate link below.
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