A new author and a much lauded suspense thriller comes my way.

In present times of social media, more than ever people are busy painting a picture of their happy lives – perfect marriages, adorable kids, picture perfect vacations. The admiration and envy is displayed with equal honor like badges creating a mirage for one & all. But does everyone know what happens behind closed doors?

This story which starts as a simple romantic narrative gradually develops into a domestic thriller. Considering how simple the plotline sounds, this could have gone either way. But it survives and captures attention span of so many readers because of the treatment given to such a two dimensional subject.

We could summarize this as a novel about domestic abuse; but it goes much beyond that due to the additional layers added to the main storyline. These range from skeletons from the past, unexpected pregnancies, new friends, old family members and even the characters on the peripherals such as the hotel manager. However, the strength of this book lies in the manner the main protagonists are treated throughout. Their mental, physical and economic build-up add oodles of layers to the plot line.

On the face of it, it’s the story of a lawyer and his wife. Considering he is ‘the champion of battered wives’ but he doesn’t practice what he preaches lends this novel its depth. Somehow due to the language, suspense which is quite open from the beginning, flashback technique take this novel farther beyond the realm of domestic drama and thus saving it from being overtly melodramatic. At the end, you remember it as a psycho thriller with a domestic plot twist and perhaps, there remains the success of this book.