Skye Starling is young, beautiful, and rich. And she’s alone. She thought she’d have found someone special by the time she was in her late 20s. But she’s not entirely well. Ever since her mother died from cancer when she was young, she’d dealt with an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder that she is embarrassed by. She’s had lovers, but either she doesn’t want to let them into her world of knocks and counting, or they decided it was too much to handle.
And then she met Burke.
Burke is older, more sophisticated. He is compassionate and not bothered by Star’s OCD knocking on doors. Skye and Burke fall in love, and he asks her to marry him.
But Burke has secrets. He has financial problems. He has three kids. And he has a wife. Reading the electronic journal he’d been writing to his marriage therapist, the plan was to marry Skye, take a bunch of her money, and go back to his wife, to the woman he’d loved since he was a teenager.
Heather’s story starts back when she was a high school kid dating Burke and making some extra money babysitting. She starts to work for Libby, a young mother of two who moved to their small town with her husband who is an artist. He had spent a lot of time making his art, and his young wife was lonely. So when Libby wanted to spend time with Heather, Heather thought it was a great way for her to find out more about how the other half lived. And she drank it up.
Because of her relationship with Libby, Heather made changes to her life. She stopped partying and focused on school, working hard to get her grades up and to appeal to a good college. She broke it off with Burke, who spent too much time drinking and experimenting with drugs. Heather was motivated. She was focused. And then she was completely derailed by an unfortunate tragedy that changed everything.
When that happened, Heather turned her back on Libby and went back to the one person who had always been there for her. She went back to Burke. And Burke stepped up. He gave up the drugs and alcohol. He worked on his grades. He joined her in making a plan for their futures, a plan where they move to New York, get their college degrees, find well paying jobs, and carve out a far better life for themselves.
Now Heather is grown, a wife and mother of three, and she has plans too. She will not let the future she had always dreamed of be put into jeopardy just because her husband marries another woman. She deserves more than that, and she’s willing to fight to make it happen.
Carola Lovering’s Too Good to Be True is a crazy wild ride of a novel, with twists you will not see coming. This domestic thriller is a beautifully written tale of a man leaving his wife for a younger woman. Or is it? Just when you think you know what’s going on, Lovering pulls the rug right out from under you. And just as you’re getting settled back into the story, she does it again. Don’t try to figure this one out in advance—you’ll give yourself whiplash when you’re tossed 180 degrees.
I was so surprised by Too Good to Be True! It was lovely, twisty, crazy, entertaining ride through relationships, doubts, grief, love, money, friendship, and betrayal. This novel has it all, and makes it all so much fun to read. If you think you can see the end of a domestic thriller coming, then I challenge you to read this one and try to see how this one brings it all home!
Egalleys for Too Good to Be True were provided by St. Martin’s Press through NetGalley, with many thanks.
