The Day After the Party by Nicole Trope
Genre: Domestic Suspense, Women's fiction, Contemporary fiction
Read: 3rd November 2023
Published: 2nd November 2023
★★★★ 4 stars
DESCRIPTION:
The perfect birthday or the perfect nightmare?
Katelyn smiles around at her husband and friends, gathered to celebrate her thirty-sixth birthday in their beautiful home decorated with fairy lights. But the next day Katelyn wakes up shaken and terrified in a hospital bed…
She doesn’t remember the sweet taste of birthday cake icing, or how angry her best friend was at midnight, or the terrible things her husband said. She doesn’t remember the party at all.
When she asks her husband what happened the night of the party he says ‘nothing’. But her blood runs cold at the way his voice lilts slightly. The way it always does when he is lying.
Did someone at the party harm her?
What is her husband hiding?
Or did Katelyn herself do something terrible?
Only one thing is certain. Nobody can be trusted. And if Katelyn’s memories of the party do come back, it will tear them all apart…
This brilliantly addictive read about dark secrets our loved ones keep from us is perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty and Sally Hepworth.
MY THOUGHTS:
The perfect birthday..the perfect nightmare...
Parties are supposed to be fun...but something happened at Katelyn's and she has no idea what. Instead, she wakes in the hospital with hubby Toby by her bedside, a worried frown etched on his face. She asks where is she and what's happened. And then she reads the note clutched in her hand...
You are in hospital.
Harper is fine and with my mum.
You've lost your memory.
You haven't had a stroke.
You've had an MRI and ECG and everything is fine.
You have something called Transient Global Amnesia.
Your lost hours of memory have shown up on the MRI as a black dot.
You aren't able to form new memories so you keep forgetting things I've told you.
Today is Sunday.
This should be temporary.
What the hell happened at her party to end up wiping her memory? It was supposed to be a memorable occasion to celebrate her thirty-sixth birthday but instead she cannot remember it at all. Any second of it! Now Katelyn has lost an entire day and night. She can remember everything leading up to the party and everything since...but those few hours are a complete blank. So what happened? And why is Toby looking decidedly shifty? What is he not telling her?
As soon as Katelyn returns home, she longs to wrap her arms around her little girl and take in her sweet scent. But she's staying with Toby's parents for the night while she recuperates and will return after preschool tomorrow. In the meantime, Katelyn instead tries to unravel the tangles of confusion that is Saturday night in her mind. Toby's patience is unwavering but Katelyn knows something is off. The way he looks at her, the way his eyes don't meet hers. What does he know that he's not telling her?
And then she gets a strange message from her best friend Leah's ex, Aaron. What on earth does that mean? And as for Leah, she wants to see her but something is telling her that something isn't right there either. She has an image in her mind of Toby hugging Leah in a way that was too intimate to be friendship. Or is she just imagining that? Nothing makes any sense to her anymore and she wants to understand what happened at her party. Why she has lost the entire night. It doesn't make sense. When she finds a gift of lingerie under her bed with no note or card, Katelyn begins to suspect Toby of having an affair making her question everything she knows. Can she piece together the night of the party before it's too late?
The story is told from Katelyn and Leah's perspectives in the past as well as before and after the party. It details the women's friendship from the time they were six years old in primary school, right through high school, uni, boyfriends and marriage. Now here they are thirty years later celebrating Katelyn's birthday. But nothing is as it seems with this friendship. They may well be best friends, but hidden beneath the surface is a jealousy so blatant it would make your hair curl.
Nicole Trope once again delivers a tangled tale of twists and surprises in this compelling domestic suspense read. What seems like an innocent party becomes one woman's worst nightmare.
I did not like Leah or Aaron one bit. They are both selfish and self-obsessed to the core. Both of them only want to get what they want. Leah's jealousy was so blatant it was a wonder Katelyn never saw it in thirty years of friendship. And Aaron. That guy was a snake. Least said there.
I thoroughly enjoyed my umpteenth read by Trope and look forward to anything she delivers. I know I am always in for a treat.
I would like to thank #NicoleTrope, #Netgalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #TheDayAfterTheParty in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Nicole Trope went to university to study Law but realised the error of her ways when she did very badly on her first law essay because-as her professor pointed out- ‘It’s not meant to be a story.’ She studied teaching instead and used her holidays to work on her writing career and complete a Masters’ degree in Children’s Literature. After the birth of her first child she stayed home full time to write and raise children, renovate houses and build a business with her husband.
The idea for her first published novel, The Boy under the Table, was so scary that it took a year for her to find the courage to write the emotional story.
She is now published by Bookouture and is an Amazon top 100 bestseller in the USA, UK, AUS and CAN.
She lives in Sydney with her husband and three children.
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