Publisher's Weekly Review
Will and Iris Griffith have the perfect marriage and a dream home, and they've just started talking about children on the morning that Will leaves for a business trip in Orlando. When a plane bound for Seattle that same day crashes and kills everyone on board, Iris is stunned to discover Will's name on the passenger manifest, and the conference in Orlando at which he was scheduled to speak turns out not to exist at all. With the help of her brother, Dave, Iris attempts to learn why Will was bound for Seattle, and in the process, she discovers that almost everything she knew about Will is a total fabrication, including his birthplace and his friendships-and there's also a large sum of money suddenly missing from the company where he worked. Each piece of the puzzle seems to create more questions than answers, especially once Iris's phone begins receiving anonymous text messages ranging from concerned to outright threatening. This is not a unique premise, and Belle's (The Last Breath) main villain is a little bit cookie-cutter, but numerous skillfully executed twists will force readers to constantly shift their allegiances from character to character, never entirely sure who to trust or what's really going on. A surprising and fast-paced read. (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
On the day after Iris and Will's seventh wedding anniversary, they're ready to start trying for a baby. But all is not as it seems.From the outside, it looks like they have a perfect marriage. Friends and family admire their beautiful home, great jobs, and passionate commitment to each other. All this changes when Will dies on a plane flight he wasn't supposed to be on. Scheduled to be en route to Florida to make a presentation at a cybersecurity conference, his name is found on the passenger manifest of a plane bound for Seattle after it crashes in a field. Looking through his files to try to figure out what he was up to, Iris finds a new will and $2.5 million in life insurance policies Will had taken out only months earlier. At a memorial service for the crash victims, she meets Corban, who introduces himself as a friend of Will's from the gym. According to Corban, Will was on his way to a job interview in Seattle, but the office he was interviewing with has never heard of him. Will doesn't seem to be hiding a secret lover, but nothing Iris believed about her husband turns out to be true. Iris proves herself a relentless investigator in a case that takes her to Will's hometown to solve the mystery of whom she married. High school classmates present a very differentand chillingpicture of Will. The suspense builds rapidly from there as Iris pulls back Will's layers of deception and solves the mystery of what the circumstances of his death meant for their marriage. A compelling adventure. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Iris Griffith never thought her marriage was anything but perfect. Sure, Will could be annoying sometimes, but their partnership was rock solid. Then Iris receives a call from Liberty Airlines notifying her that Will was a passenger on Flight 23, which crashed en route from Atlanta to Seattle, with no survivors. Will had left from the Atlanta airport that morning, but he was headed to Orlando for a conference . . . wasn't he? As Iris starts unraveling the series of lies behind her husband's disappearance, she realizes that the bedrock of her marriage was anything but solid. Belle harnesses her heroine's grief, disbelief, anger, and love to fuel this domestic thriller, splicing in modern technology for a ripped-from-the-headlines feel. Belle's taut pacing drives the story forward, and the relatability of the Griffiths will hit readers close to home. With plot twists around every corner, Belle isn't afraid to keep her readers guessing until the very last page of this heart-pounding story of one woman's desperate search for answers.--Turza, Stephanie Copyright 2016 Booklist
