After tossing and turning all night, thirty-nine-year-old Lisa Barkley wakes up well before her alarm sounds .With two daughters about the start another year at their elite Upper East Side private school and her own career hitting a wall, the effort of trying to stay afloat in that privileged world of six-story town houwes and European jaunts has become increasingly difficult, especially as Manhattan descends into an economic freefall.
As Lisa looks over at her sleeping husband, Sam, she can't help but feel that their fifteen-year marriage is in a funk that she isn't able to place. she tries to shake it off and tells herself that the strain must be due to their mounting financial pressures. But later that morning, as her family eats breakfast in the next room, Lisa finds herself checking Sam's voicemail and hears a whispered phone call from a woman he is to meet that night. Is he having an affair?
When Lisa shares her suspicions with her best friend, Deirdre, at their weekly breakfast, Deirdre claims it can't be true. But how can Lisa fully trust her opinion when Deirdre is still single and mired in an obsessive affair with a glamourous photographer even as it hovers on the edge of danger?
When Deidre's former college flame, Jack, comes to town and the two couples meet to celebrate his fortieth birthday, the stage is set for an explosive series of discoveries with devastating consequences.
Filled with suspense and provocative questions about the relationships we value most, Best Intentions is a tightly woven drama of love, friendship and betrayal.
Let me preface this by saying that this book was sent to me to review by Atria Books. I did very much enjoy the story - from what was written on the book jacket, I assumed it was going to be a couple chapters about the family, the background, etc., but just about everything that's written in the jacket summary happened right away. It was a great way to hook the reader that's for sure!
As Lisa started discovering her husband's secrets, and then her best friend brushed them aside, she started to have doubts about everything. Because Lisa was telling the story, it was so easy for me as a reader to understand her frustrations when she immediately starting distrusting her husband. Probably any woman who found a mysterious woman's voice mail message on her husband's phone would immediately suspect an affair.
So, after Lisa confided in her best friend Deirdre, who brushed it off, a little more confusion started swirling in her head. To top it off, Lisa was trying to hard to keep her shaky work life to herself. There was something off about the new management, and a colleague who appeared to have her best interests in mind turned out to also have a dark side.
And then, Deirdre's long-ago (now married) flame who was still carrying a torch for her appears, and asks for a bit too much of Lisa's time. Not being able to say no, Lisa dives into Jack's plan to win back Deirdre, and never really questions his wife, who is still in Boston. When tragedy came along in the form of a sudden death, everyone is a suspect, and Lisa's life comes to a crashing hault. Everyone around her has a story, and it's not until she hears them all does she know who she can trust. And as it turned out, her husband was the one.
You know that saying that there are always two sides to every story? Well since the book was written from Lisa's point of view, her husband was automatically cast as the secret-keeping, cheating spouse, and it wasn't until the very end that the full, true story unfolded. That's why I like these types of books. The reader knows something about the story is off, but it takes all the unraveling for us to connect the loose ends.
I loved this book - I highly recommend it. Thanks to Atria Books for the opportunity to read and review it!
