A down-on-her-luck waitress at a posh New Jersey country club, Kim Valva couldn’t be living a more different life from the carefree socialites she serves. Her live-in boyfriend recently cheated on her, her social life is in shambles, and her dog needs a life-saving surgery that she can’t afford. Then her luck seems to change when a mysterious figure identifying themself only as The Stranger contacts her with an offer she can’t refuse: Put a pill in the new member’s drink and, when he dies, she’ll have enough money to fix her dog and her life.
Her target turns out to be Tony Fiore―Kim’s bad boy ex-boyfriend from high school. Fifteen years have passed, and he now goes by Anthony Fuller. He’s cleaned up, made tens of millions, and his gorgeous fiancée, twenty-two-year-old PJ Walsh, is on his arm.
PJ had her own agenda from the second she met Anthony. Find him, trick him, marry him, kill him. It was supposed to be easy, but she finds that while living her double life, the lines blur between who she is and who she’s pretending to be.
Stunned to see Tony again, Kim can’t bring herself to go through with spiking his drink. Instead, it is PJ who dies horrifically at the table just as dinner ends. Was someone else at the club―member or worker―tasked with poisoning PJ just as she had been instructed to do to Tony? Who would want both of them dead? With no one to trust and The Stranger to answer to, Kim must peel back the layers of deceit to reveal a deeply buried truth, more shocking than she could ever imagine… (Synopsis courtesy of Amazon.)
Jaime Lynn Hendricks is one of my go-to psychological thriller authors, and Their Double Lives is currently my favorite of her deliciously suspenseful novels!
I was totally engaged by this cat and mouse game and couldn't put the book down. It kept me guessing as to who The Stranger could be and I was so nervous for Kim the entire time. I loved the flashbacks to PJ's story and she was just as much a sympathetic character as Kim was. I was equally nervous for her! It was really easy to visualize people and places without details taking away from the narrative. There was just a nice balance of description and plot.
There is a lot going on in this novel and I don't want to say too much so as to not spoil anything. It's definitely a page-turner and one you won't want to miss when it hits shelves in mid-May.
Side note: There's a minor character whose name made me contact the author to tell her about a coincidence in my life. If you've known me for a long time, you'll recognize the name right away!
(Trigger warnings below.)
Kim: Monica Barbaro
PJ: Gus Birney
Matt: Jordan Doww
Anthony: Christopher Abbott
Carla: Samaire Armstrong
Maddy: Nichole Sakura
Thanks to Thriller Book Lovers the Pulse for the book in exchange for an honest review.
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TW: Animal being really sick, witnessing a disturbing death, death of parents (one by murder)
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