Reviews with content warning for Cancer - The Golden Couple

In the spirit of reading tense, twisty books, I thought I knew what was going to happen…and I was surprised it didn’t!

This is a read where you don’t want to miss any word. The character interactions, both spoken and unspoken, are detailed and important and actually threw me off a bit (from my original theory). Couldn’t stop reading this!

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gabriellainman's review

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dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

CWs: cancer, murder, infidelity

Marissa and Matthew Bishop seek out therapist turned life coach Avery Chambers to counsel them after Marissa is unfaithful. In her ten-step program, Avery takes the couple on an unconventional journey to fix underlying issues in their marriage and dig through the secrets the couple keeps. Through love and heartbreak, both Marissa and Matthew want to stay together and will do anything to stay together.

Told in a dual POV through Marissa and Avery’s characters, secrets stay hidden until the last few chapters. As both characters race to fix a marriage within ten sessions, they both struggle to accept their own truths and conquer facing them together.

A captivating novel with two wildly different characters, I was hooked from the very beginning. Every time I believed novel was going one way, I was proved wrong and led in a different direction. By the end, I had no idea what was going to happen until it happened.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ / 5

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foldingthepage_kayleigh's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The hype is real! If you like domestic thrillers, then you’ll love this one. The audiobook edition is definitely elevated by having two narrators to reflect the different POVs in this book.

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toofondofbooks_'s review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

So this book is about a therapist who's lost her license and now she treats her patients with out-of-the-box methods, because she can, and somehow no one steps in to question her ethics. Literally, not a single person in this entire book stops for one second to say, "this isn't ethical." Right off the bat, it's asking me to suspend a little too much of my disbelief.

So much of this book hinges on you being patient with mediocre writing, hollow characters, twists that make absolutely no sense with very little evidence throughout the book to support it, and for you to keep track of a bunch of side characters that add little to the story as a whole. Not to mention, by the time I was less than halfway through, I was already so tired of reading about these privileged WASPs - literally characters with lineage dating back to the Mayflower. I just stopped caring, but I *did* want to know if my theories were correct, because I am a freak who is obsessed with being right.

I can't say this is a complete dud - the book did have its moments that were genuinely creepy, and where I thought that Avery, the therapist, was sort of interesting. I enjoyed her chapters because at least they didn't feel as hollow as the chapters that followed Marissa, her client and one half of "the golden couple" in question. I also enjoyed her dog, he was adorable. I also thought that one of the scenes toward the end was very chilling, but it quickly became cringey and far-fetched, so it didn't really amount to much. Though I did enjoy Avery at times, it became increasingly hard to believe that she is as smart as these authors want to pretend she is.

All of this said, for once, I didn't call the ending of a thriller, which I enjoy, usually...except...I only didn't guess this ending because it made no sense in any realm.

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thatswhatshanread's review

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mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This is my first Hendricks/Pekkanen book and it was a pretty solid domestic thriller!

The writing was gripping and the short chapters helped moved the story along, even when I found some parts of the plot dragging a little. I did like the dual POVs switching between the two main female characters of the novel, the unorthodox therapist and the unfaithful wife. Overall, the web of lies and deception played out well, bringing in several minor characters to make you second guess things.

Still, the final moments and twists of the book kinda threw me off of the intrigue. It didn’t quite add up, perhaps feeling a little rushed and tired, in terms of the genre. I guess I was disappointed in the end results, but I wouldn’t say that made it a bad book. I just hoped for something else to happen.

This one was definitely all about perfect appearances, and people not being who they seem to be on the surface. Perfection often precedes secrecy.

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veronicats's review

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mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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