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A review by thephdivabooks
The Woman in the Park by Tullan Holmqvist, Teresa Sorkin
5.0
A married woman, a mysterious stranger, a murder…
Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist wrote a slam-dunk five-star thriller that kept my mind spinning to the very last delightfully twisted page! Once you pick up The Woman in the Park, you won’t be able to put it down!
About the Book
Manhattanite Sarah Rock is going through a tough time. She is certain her husband Eric is having an affair with his younger coworker Juliette. Her kids are away from home at boarding school. She’s so lonely. To fill her time in between preparing for her weekends with the kids, events with her husband, and appointments with her therapist, Sarah sometimes takes a book to Central Park to read.
One day, Sarah is reading in the park when she is approached by a handsome and mysterious stranger named Lawrence. He strikes up a conversation about her book, Thérèse Raquin, which he has read before. After the most authentic and intriguing adult conversation Sarah has had in ages, she finds herself think about Lawrence more and more. Running into eachother again in the park, it begins to become a regular thing, and before long the two strike up a steamy affair.
But when the police show up at Sarah’s door a few weeks later investigating the murder of a woman whom Sarah saw in the park, things begin to unravel. The woman is somehow connected to Lawrence. Sarah hasn’t heard from Lawrence in a while, and now she starts to wonder if there is more to this affair than she realized.
As Sarah finds herself accused of this serious crime, her view of what is true and what are lies becomes distorted. Sarah needs to find out what is going on, if she can keep it together long enough…
Reflection
This is a quick read, and the authors don’t waste a paragraph of this book on a throwaway moment. Every single sentence kept me glued to the pages. Truly, this is one of my favorite books of 2019! Twisted, dark, and disorienting in the most delightful and salacious way.
There’s no omniscient narrator in this book, which meant that I was never totally certain what to believe and what was happening. The writing is brilliant! How two authors collaborated in such a tightly woven story and kept the writing so flawless, I’ll never know! I wish I could ask them how they did it, because this is one of the most seamless dual-authored novels I’ve ever read.
The psychologist in me was obsessed with Sarah as the main character. Sarah isn’t unreliable in the way of lying to the reader, but she is unreliable in the sense that she is struggling a bit with her mental health, and so I found myself never really trusting her reporting of the events. Sarah is paranoid, she has gaps in time, and she’s a bit erratic. But there is something so pure and vulnerable about Sarah, that I felt my heart wanting to reach into the book and protect her.
But from who??
That’s the key to this book! What exactly is going on? Obviously, I’m not going to tell you, but I want to say this: I read a LOT of thrillers and I have seen a lot of twists, and I didn’t even come close to guessing what was happening in this book. Masterful! I thought I had it all figured out, and then suddenly everything turned over and then twisted again. The entire last third of the book is impossible to put down for even a moment!
A truly twisted ride that left me so satisfied, and simultaneously wanting more from these authors! I am blown away!!!
Thank you to the authors and to Suzy Approved Book Tours for my copy. Opinions are my own.
Teresa Sorkin and Tullan Holmqvist wrote a slam-dunk five-star thriller that kept my mind spinning to the very last delightfully twisted page! Once you pick up The Woman in the Park, you won’t be able to put it down!
About the Book
Manhattanite Sarah Rock is going through a tough time. She is certain her husband Eric is having an affair with his younger coworker Juliette. Her kids are away from home at boarding school. She’s so lonely. To fill her time in between preparing for her weekends with the kids, events with her husband, and appointments with her therapist, Sarah sometimes takes a book to Central Park to read.
One day, Sarah is reading in the park when she is approached by a handsome and mysterious stranger named Lawrence. He strikes up a conversation about her book, Thérèse Raquin, which he has read before. After the most authentic and intriguing adult conversation Sarah has had in ages, she finds herself think about Lawrence more and more. Running into eachother again in the park, it begins to become a regular thing, and before long the two strike up a steamy affair.
But when the police show up at Sarah’s door a few weeks later investigating the murder of a woman whom Sarah saw in the park, things begin to unravel. The woman is somehow connected to Lawrence. Sarah hasn’t heard from Lawrence in a while, and now she starts to wonder if there is more to this affair than she realized.
As Sarah finds herself accused of this serious crime, her view of what is true and what are lies becomes distorted. Sarah needs to find out what is going on, if she can keep it together long enough…
Reflection
This is a quick read, and the authors don’t waste a paragraph of this book on a throwaway moment. Every single sentence kept me glued to the pages. Truly, this is one of my favorite books of 2019! Twisted, dark, and disorienting in the most delightful and salacious way.
There’s no omniscient narrator in this book, which meant that I was never totally certain what to believe and what was happening. The writing is brilliant! How two authors collaborated in such a tightly woven story and kept the writing so flawless, I’ll never know! I wish I could ask them how they did it, because this is one of the most seamless dual-authored novels I’ve ever read.
The psychologist in me was obsessed with Sarah as the main character. Sarah isn’t unreliable in the way of lying to the reader, but she is unreliable in the sense that she is struggling a bit with her mental health, and so I found myself never really trusting her reporting of the events. Sarah is paranoid, she has gaps in time, and she’s a bit erratic. But there is something so pure and vulnerable about Sarah, that I felt my heart wanting to reach into the book and protect her.
But from who??
That’s the key to this book! What exactly is going on? Obviously, I’m not going to tell you, but I want to say this: I read a LOT of thrillers and I have seen a lot of twists, and I didn’t even come close to guessing what was happening in this book. Masterful! I thought I had it all figured out, and then suddenly everything turned over and then twisted again. The entire last third of the book is impossible to put down for even a moment!
A truly twisted ride that left me so satisfied, and simultaneously wanting more from these authors! I am blown away!!!
Thank you to the authors and to Suzy Approved Book Tours for my copy. Opinions are my own.