Blurb
Me: I’ve just turned forty. My ex dumped me a year ago – and I’m still not over him.
Her: My best friend Maddie has everything I’ve ever wanted. A successful, handsome husband. A designer riverside home. A cleaner. A gardener. A luxury kitchen that cost three times my salary. And Joe, their sixteen-year-old son.
Him: Joe, my strapping, sweet-natured godson, says I’m like his second mum. Sometimes I think I’m closer to him than his real mum.
Then, late one night, there’s a hammering at the door. It’s Joe. Visibly upset and angry. He rushes past me before I even get the chance to invite him inside.
What he tells me – and what happens next will destroy EVERYTHING.
My review
I am going to stick my neck out and say that The Godmother will still be one of my favourite books by the end of 2024. It is a book I haven’t been able to put down, incredibly well written with a race-along story and phenomenally developed characters.
Perfectly turned-out Zoe has a secret, which has nothing to do with hoping to keep her fortieth birthday under the radar and to escape with nothing more to mark the occasion than a quiet evening meal with best friend, Maddie. Therefore, she’s horrified to arrive at work in the high-end hair and beauty salon, to find her plans have been hijacked with a surprise party, complete with warm Prosecco in paper cups and a 40th candle adorned birthday cake. In her head and as each member of staff comes up to pass on their presents and good wishes, Zoe calls each by their pet name, which includes the thing that makes them most memorable and which ensures she has always got something to talk to them about. This is her and Maddie’s childhood game.
Neither Maddie nor Zoe have perfect lives, despite the outward facade both uphold to each other and to everyone who knows them.
Their million-pound lifestyle seems the only shallow comfort from their dysfunctional lives. Madeline is determined to hang onto this lifestyle at any cost and has determinedly shed what she sees as the shackles of her council house upbringing. Zoe is the only person from her past she’s in touch with.
Mealtimes in the Black household are often conducted in silence with the family too afraid to voice an opinion in front of Mike who Joe unwittingly and unwillingly takes after. In personal digs, surgeon Mike and nurse Madeleine both take pot shots at each other based on their medical knowledge of mental health issues.
Neither Maddie nor Zoe have any idea of what goes on behind the closed doors of each other’s lives, although Zoe has a little hint at her birthday meal in the restaurant that night from Mike’s hugs, which always go on for a little too long.
At the meal, Mike decides what everyone will eat without consulting anyone and completely overrules Joe’s menu requests. It is clear that Mike’s been drinking before coming out and Zoe knows from Maddie’s expression that she would be equally furious with her best friend if she knew that Zoe had introduced him and Joe to marijuana which Zoe knows both now regularly smoke.
Joe is no innocent victim though. In therapy, having lashed out at Maddie the previous year, which left her with a bruised face she would rather people think her husband than her son was responsible for. Joe’s therapist won’t give away any details of their conversations but says that Joe is a pathological liar. Reluctant to take this on board, together with threats of expulsion from school, Maddie is nonetheless aware of her son’s enjoyment of the torture of innocent creatures and doesn’t know where to go to with this knowledge as she clings to the flimsy materialistic artifice she and Mike have created.
These character details are released in the first four chapters and make this a gripping story where the reader is unsure what the denouement will be but is in no doubt that it will be explosive. I’m not giving any more details away here, but this story is phenomenal and an absolute must-read for fans of psychological fiction.
About the author
Jane E. James is a bestselling author who likes to create chilling reads that appeal to fans of psychological suspense thrillers, mysteries, and dark fiction. Her novels are packed with plot twists and turns that keep the reader guessing. All of them are standalone novels.
Jane loves to weave tense and haunting tales that stay in the reader’s mind. She is especially fond of unreliable narrators who never let truth get in the way of a good story. Jane recently signed a new two-book publishing deal after her 2nd novel, The Crying Boy, a compelling suspense thriller, became an overnight best seller, knocking both Stephen King and Dean Koontz off the Amazon top spot in suspense.
Jane can mostly be found with her head in a book or writing at her desk, with a dog curled up at her feet or her cat, Hero, in a small country village near Stamford, Lincolnshire in the UK, which is known for its quirky tea shops and cobbled streets. Rebecca, Carrie, The Woman in Black and Wuthering Heights are among some of Jane’s favourite reads.
Her third novel, The Butcher’s Daughter, is a tense and haunting psychological thriller, and already a best seller in the US.
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