Book Review: The Girlfriend by Michelle Frances

The Girlfriend

by

Michelle Frances

I picked up this book whilst shopping with my birthday gift vouchers earlier in the year. I have heard good things on Twitter about it and one of my work colleagues had read this and said it was good so I picked it up with another 5 books.

"The X-Files taught us to "Trust No One" this book proves they were right. A Cracking thriller"

Blurb:

A girl. A boy. His mother. And the lie she'll wish she'd never told.

Laura has it all. A successful career, a long marriage to a rich husband, and a 23 year old son, Daniel, who is kind, handsome and talented.

Then Daniel meets Cherry. Cherry is young, beautiful and smart but she hasn't had the same opportunities as Daniel. And she wants Laura's life.

Cherry comes to the family wide-eyed and wants to be welcomed with open arms, but Laura suspects she's not all that she seems.

When tragedy strikes, one of them tells an unforgivable lie - probably the worst lie anyone could tell. It is an act of desperation, but the fall-out will change lives forever.

Review:

This is Michelle Frances debut novel so I had no idea how the writing or story telling would be. Like I said before I had heard great things about this book, but sometimes that could be a problem as your expectations are already high and there is that worry that you could be let down. Thankfully though all was good. I got straight into this book from the off and never looked back. It was one of those books that you think you have been reading for ten minutes, but then you realise you are already a 100 pages in. The chapters were short, which I love in psychological thrillers as you can you have a lot of "just one more chapter" moments. This really added to the pace of the book. This was another book that took me just over a week to read which is really quick for me. I am getting a lot faster now with my reading and I am on course to smashing my target I set in January.

The story itself was brilliant, dark and so addictive. The X-files (one of my favourite TV shows of all time) taught us to "Trust No One" and this book proved they were right. Lie after lie by more than one character, just to get the upper hand and get what they really want. I have not really read anything along these sort of lines before and I thought it was great. There were more twists than you can shake a stick at and just when you thought it was over... Boom! another one.. 

I loved the characters in this book. The main ones were Laura, Cherry & Daniel. Cherry was my favourite. I found she had a very dark mind, and would not stop till she got what she wanted. It was great to follow her throughout the book. Would she get what she wanted or would she fail at the last hurdle?

Thinking about this book, I don't think there was anything I did not like about it. From start to finish it was brilliant and if you love psychological thrillers like I do you have to give this one a go. I think you will love it.

I scored this book a 5 out of 5. A quality debut novel. I cannot wait for Michelle's next novel. Because of this book I will automatically buy the next. Hopefully It was be as good as this one and won't let me down.

Have you read The Girlfriend by Michelle Frances? what do you think? Do you agree with me or not? I would love to know..

Speak soon,

CBailey31