Thomas Christopher Greene | THE PERFECT LIAR

Plot (via Goodreads):

A seemingly perfect marriage is threatened by the deadly secrets husband and wife keep from each other, for fans of B.A. Paris and Paula Hawkins.

Susannah, a young widow and single mother, has remarried well: to Max, a charismatic artist and popular speaker whose career took her and her fifteen-year-old son out of New York City and to a quiet Vermont university town. Strong-willed and attractive, Susannah expects that her life is perfectly in place again. Then one quiet morning she finds a note on her door: I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. 

Max dismisses the note as a prank. But days after a neighborhood couple comes to dinner, the husband mysteriously dies in a tragic accident while on a run with Max. Soon thereafter, a second note appears on their door: DID YOU GET AWAY WITH IT?

Both Susannah and Max are keeping secrets from the world and from each other —secrets that could destroy their family and everything they have built. The Perfect Liar is a thrilling novel told through the alternating perspectives of Susannah and Max with a shocking climax that no one will expect, from the bestselling author of The Headmaster’s Wife.

Review:

The Perfect Liar is a great example of a domestic psychological thriller that is not only expertly paced, but features some great aspects that are necessary to paint an awe-inspiring thriller. Unreliable characters, a plot shrouded in secrets, chilling imagery, and a relentless stalker that builds fear in the characters and reader alike with each calculated move. 

Reading this novel that takes place in Vermont was exceptionally special for me. As someone who frequents Vermont very often, it's a brilliant setting for a thriller. The lush dark woods, the remoteness of the forest, and the frosty weather places the reader in a bubble of fear before the first note is left. I loved how this one began with the first letter and then took a step back to give the reader a true feeling of the relationship between Susannah and Max. 

The characters of Susannah and Max were written well enough to keep me interested and undecided as to who I liked and who I didn't like. With a novel under 300 pages, Greene wastes no time building characters that grow as the pages fly by and the pacing mounts incredibly. I was intrigued from the beginning of this novel and found myself enjoying the story until about halfway through and then I was feverish trying to get to the truth of the past, present, and future of this novel. 

I can't say much about this one to avoid spoilers other than that as you progress with this novel, a cat and mouse game is exposed with not only some key characters of this novel but also between the pages and the reader. I was lost in my own thoughts at times trying to figure out where this novel was going and thwarted each time. As much as I hate being wrong, I was thankful this time as I read the final sentence in this twisty and psychologically chilling novel. 

Special thanks to St. Martin's Press for this copy in exchange for my honest review.

Rating: 4/5