Behind Closed Doors

Author: B.A Paris
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Type: Hardcover
Pages: 304
Publisher: St Martin's Press
First Published: August 9, 2016
First Line: "The champagne bottle knocks against the marble kitchen counter, making me jump.'

Book Description from GoodReads: Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace: he has looks and wealth, she has charm and elegance. You'd like to get to know Grace better. But it's difficult, because you realize Jack and Grace are never apart. Some might call this true love.

Picture this: a dinner party at their perfect home, the conversation and wine flowing. They appear to be in their element while entertaining. And Grace's friends are eager to reciprocate with lunch the following week. Grace wants to go, but knows she never will. Her friends call—so why doesn't Grace ever answer the phone? And how can she cook such elaborate meals but remain so slim?

And why are there bars on one of the bedroom windows?

The perfect marriage? Or the perfect lie?

My Rating: 3 stars

My Review: Behind Closed Doors has been the talk of the town since it hit store shelves earlier this year.  Ratings were high and people were throwing stars at it left, right and centre! While it seemed like it would be a home run for me Behind Closed Doors didn't manage to wow me.

It started off strong and I immediately pictured Grace as a Bree Vandekamp-type woman (you know Bree from Desperate Housewives?) with her perfect soufflés, handsome husband and what seems like an idyllic life. The author sets up her story well but around page 100 things started to fall apart for me as the story line became stagnant and there was more telling and less showing the reader what was going on. 

I had expected a twisty suspense read but it was more of a melodrama. There were a few instances of suspense and while I wouldn't say that the plot or resolution was totally far-fetched it does lay on the far end of the plausibility scale as readers are forced to suspend reality for a large portion of the book.

For me, the characters were the weakest part of the book. They felt more like one-dimensional soap opera characters and I didn't find them believable or even likable. One is very naive and misses clues left, right and centre and another is pure evil (cue the mustache twirling baddie) with no redeeming qualities.  It's hard to get behind characters like that.

That being said, this book was still a page turner at times but I disagree with some readers' comments that it's similar to The Girl on the Train or even Gone Girl.  Readers are privy to several of the twists early on which made the suspense dwindle while the sinister feeling escalated. Where it does have similarities to Gone Girl is that I didn't care about the main characters at all - well, except for Millie.  I liked her.

Overall, this was an okay read.  It had a great premise, super creepy factor but if the characters had been stronger and the reader was given some hard to predict twists this book would have been amazing.