#Review - House of Glass by Sarah Pekkanen #Domestic #Thriller

Series: Standalone
Format: Hardcover, 354 pages
Release Date: August 6, 2024
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Source: Publisher
Genre: Thriller / Domestic

The past and the present collide in the most unexpected ways in #1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah Pekkanen's latest thriller, The House of Glass.

Rose Barclay is an 8-year-old girl who witnessed the death of her nanny —in the midst of her parents' contentious divorce— and immediately fell into traumatic mutism. Stella Hudson is a Best Interest Attorney, appointed to serve as counsel for children in custody cases. She never accepts clients under 13 due to her own traumatic childhood, but Stella's mentor, a revered judge, believes Stella is the only one who can help.

From the moment Stella passes through the iron security gate and steps into the gilded, sprawling D.C. home of the Barclays, she realizes the case is even more twisted, and the Barclay family far creepier, than she feared. And there’s something off about the house itself: its a plastic house, with not a single bit of glass to be found.

As Stella comes closer to uncovering the secrets the Barclays hold close, danger wraps around her like a shroud, and her past and present collide in ways she never expected. Everyone is a suspect in the nanny's murder. The mother, the father, the grandmother, the nanny’s boyfriend. Even Rose. Is the person Stella's supposed to protect the one she may need protection from? From bestselling thriller writer, Sarah Pekkanen, comes a new, riveting novel filled with buried secrets and page-turning twists.

Sarah Pekkanen's House of Glass is a psychological thriller focusing on a family named Barclay whose nanny fell to her death at her place of employment, and now it is up to Stella Hudson, a woman whose past is fraught with horrors, to sort what happened. It is up to her to decide whether 9-year-old Rose Barclay is safe with her father, Ian, or mother, Beth, or Grandmother, or if Rose played a role in the nanny's untimely death. Stella is what you call a best interest attorney or guardian ad litem. It is up to Stella to represent the children in any divorce proceedings. 

Pulled into this case thanks to her mentor and friend Judge Charles Huxley, Stella is supposed to assess Rose's world and make reports back to the court who will determine who Rose will end up with. But as Stella gets a better look into the home, and Rose's living situation, she notices that Rose seems to be collecting sharp objects. Why? Here is what Stella has been told. Rose, who is 8-years-old, witnessed death of her nanny Tina in the midst of her parents' contentious divorce and immediately fell into traumatic mutism. 

It seems as though Ian, the father, had an affair with Tina, and Tina ended up pregnant. Stella normally doesn't accept clients under 13 due to her own traumatic childhood of finding her own mother murdered when she was a child, which also sent her into a phase where she was unable to talk to anyone. From the moment Stella passes through the iron security gate and steps into the gilded, sprawling D.C. home of the Barclays, she realizes the case is even more twisted, and the Barclay family far creepier, than she feared. 

And there’s something off about the house itself: its a plastic house, with not a single bit of glass to be found. As Stella comes closer to uncovering the secrets the Barclays hold close, danger wraps around her like a shroud, and her past and present collide in ways she never expected. Everyone is a suspect in the nanny's murder. The mother, the father, the grandmother, the nanny’s boyfriend, and yes, even Rose. Is the person Stella's supposed to protect the one she may need protection from? From bestselling thriller writer, Sarah Pekkanen, comes a new, riveting novel filled with buried secrets and page-turning twists.

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#Review - The Favor by Nora Murphy #Thriller #Suspense #Domestic

Series: Standalone
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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