The Stranger in our Bed by Samantha Lee Howe
Genre: Domestic thriller, psychological thriller
Read: 26th May 2020
Purchase: Amazon
(publication date: 14th February 2020)
★★★★★ 5 stars
WOW! I went to bed early last night to start reading THE STRANGER IN OUR BED...and stayed up until 3.30am to finish it! It's the first time I can actually remember reading a book in one complete sitting! Initially, I had planned to read till around midnight...but nope, by then I was completely hooked and nothing would stop me till I completed it. It was an absolute rollercoaster from start to finish.
Charlotte met Tom when they were both studying corporate law at Oxford and upon graduating the couple married in a lavish wedding at the family manor in Surrey. Tom moved into the family company, Carlisle Corp, while Charlotte's own law degree was left on the shelf, spending her days lunching and organising charity events.
Charlotte thought she had married the man of her dreams but twelve years later she is left feeling unhappy and unfulfilled. Tom and his mother control everything she does down to the tiniest detail and she has little freedom. But why? She has everything she could ever need, they shop at Harrod's, they have a huge London apartment, a country estate in Surrey and a chauffeur driven limo - what else could she possibly wish for? Except happiness.
And then she meets Ewan.
Two chance meetings with him lead to coffee...then dinner...and then an all consuming affair. With Ewan, Charlotte can be herself. He makes her happy and with him she feels loved. She falls desperately in love with him and after months of sneaking around, tells Tom that she is leaving him. But when she arrives at their arranged meeting place the following morning, Ewan is not there. She waits for hours in the rain and he fails to show. She calls him but his number has been disconnected. She goes to the flat they used to meet at, but only a woman answers the door claiming that she is the only one living there. She returns to their meeting place and waits...but Ewan never shows.
And then a black limo draws up alongside her. Tom.
Despite her infidelity, Tom takes Charlotte back and together they work on rekindling their marriage. For the first several weeks, Charlotte is devastated to be duped by Ewan even moreso after Tom shows her a Facebook page outlining "Catfishing" where other women have been duped by similar men into leaving their husbands and the lives behind only to be left realising that none of it was real. How could she be so stupid? Ewan had really played her. She had believed him. She had loved him. And now he had vanished...as if he had never existed.
Then Charlotte falls pregnant and baby Melody is born...and everything finally seems to be falling into place. But after a passing remark by their nanny Tina about how much Melody resembles Charlotte, Tom is furious and demands a paternity test. He may have taken her back, but his anger was evident. And there was something about Tom that unsettled her.
Charlotte finds an unlikely ally in her mother-in-law who, while championing their reunion, confides that she would never let anything happen to her. What does Isadora know? She always claimed that everything she did was for Tom. So is she hiding something else?
And then Charlotte discovers an email from Ewan on her husband's laptop and a file in his desk drawer on the two of them. What does this mean? Just how much does Tom know about Ewan? Or more to the point, how much does she know about Tom?
Based on a true story, THE STRANGER IN OUR BED is a dark and twisted domestic thriller about one of the most toxic relationships I have ever read. And a scary example of gaslighting that you would hope it will never happen to you. It is well crafted and brilliantly told and while I did predict most of it, I didn't see that final reveal coming until the very end. However, it was an incredibly satisfying end to one of the best domestic thrillers I have come across.
A tale so twisted it is disturbing, THE STRANGER IN OUR BED is an addictive fast paced thriller that would make Hitchcock proud. Even down to the gothic manor of the Carlisle country estate in Surrey. And the more you read, the darker it gets.
An outstanding debut thriller from Samantha Lee Howe that is by far one of the best domestic thrillers I have come across.
I would like to thank #SamanthaLeeHowe, #NetGalley and #HarperCollinsUK and #OneMoreChapter for an ARC of #TheStrangerInOurBed in exchange for an honest review.
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