Format: Hardcover, 288 pages
Release Date: May 31, 2022
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thrillers / Suspense / Domestic
Staying is dangerous. Leaving could be worse.
Leah and McKenna have never met, though they have parallel lives.
They don’t—ever—find themselves in the same train carriage or meet accidentally at the gym or the coffee shop. They don’t—ever—discuss their problems and find common ground. They don’t—ever—acknowledge
to each other that although their lives have all the trappings of
success, wealth and happiness, they are, in fact, trapped.
Because
Leah understands that what’s inside a home can be more dangerous than
what’s outside. Driving past McKenna’s house one night, she sees what
she knows only too well herself from her own marriage: McKenna’s
“perfect” husband is not what he seems. She decides to keep an eye out
for McKenna, until one night, she intervenes.
Leah and McKenna have never met. But they will.
The Favor, by author Nora Murphy, is her debut novel. The Favor explores with compassion and depth what can happen when women pushed to the limit take matters into their own hands. The two protagonists, Leah Dawson and McKenna Hawkins, are in marriages that look idyllic from the outside, but their wealthy homes and classy cars are only the facades their husbands have constructed. When Leah notices McKenna reacting to her husband, Zack, Leah believes that McKenna is just like her.
“I AM SOMEONE LIKE YOU”
Leah's husband, Liam, is a successful divorce attorney, and created a situation where Leah would be fired, so she could stay home and be a perfect wife. Zack forced McKenna to quit her job as a doctor so she could concentrate on becoming pregnant. These men control every aspect of the lives of their wives, to the point where it is debilitating. Then one night, everything changes when Leah intervenes and sets a series of events into motion. Now, McKenna and Leah are inextricably connected. The question is: will McKenna help Leah with her own domestic situation?
There is a third party involved in this story. After losing his partner to a domestic violence call gone wrong, Detective Jordan Harrison finds himself searching for clues as to what happened to Zachary Hawkins and whether is wife was responsible. After Liam is murdered, Harrison finds himself digging into the lives of both women. Did McKenna kill her husband? Did Leah kill hers? Leah and McKenna are educated, professional, intelligent and sophisticated women who seem to have been abused, coerced, and isolated by their spouses. The more Harrison digs into the cases, the more he realizes there's more than meets the eyes but can he prove what actually happened?
As our understanding of abuse, coercive control and the partners trapped in these dark marriages deepens as a society, fans of the genre are increasingly drawn toward understanding these women and unraveling the lies that their abusers hide behind. The Favor hits at the sweet spot of all of the most popular suspense themes and plots—The Girl on the Train, Strangers on a Train, The Woman in the Window, Big Little Lies and Behind Closed Doors.
But rather than these narrators
being unreliable, they tell us their truths all the way through, in all
its shocking and compelling honesty, making it a wholly new reading
experience rooted in territory that readers are consistently ready for. Murphy brings her professional experience depth
and compassion to this novel—as a family attorney specializing in
domestic abuse and coercive control, sensitive to the important issues it raises and explores
so expertly and thoughtfully through the lens of a compulsive thriller.
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