A Simple Favor - Blog Tour Mystery Review

About A Simple Favor

• Hardcover: 304 pages • Publisher: Harper (March 21, 2017)

"Riveting and brilliantly structured, A Simple Favor is an edge-of-your seat domestic thriller about a missing wife and mother that relies on a rotating cast of unreliable narrators to ingeniously examine the cost of competitive mom-friends, the toll of ordinary marital discontent and the fallacy of the picture-perfect, suburban family."—Kimberly McCreight, New York Times bestselling author

She’s your best friend. She knows all your secrets. That’s why she’s so dangerous. A single mother's life is turned upside down when her best friend vanishes in this chilling debut thriller in the vein of Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. It starts with a simple favor—an ordinary kindness mothers do for one another. When her best friend, Emily, asks Stephanie to pick up her son Nicky after school, she happily says yes. Nicky and her son, Miles, are classmates and best friends, and the five-year-olds love being together—just like she and Emily. A widow and stay-at-home mommy blogger living in woodsy suburban Connecticut, Stephanie was lonely until she met Emily, a sophisticated PR executive whose job in Manhattan demands so much of her time. But Emily doesn’t come back. She doesn’t answer calls or return texts. Stephanie knows something is terribly wrong—Emily would never leave Nicky, no matter what the police say. Terrified, she reaches out to her blog readers for help. She also reaches out to Emily’s husband, the handsome, reticent Sean, offering emotional support. It’s the least she can do for her best friend. Then, she and Sean receive shocking news. Emily is dead. The nightmare of her disappearance is over. Or is it? Because soon, Stephanie will begin to see that nothing—not friendship, love, or even an ordinary favor—is as simple as it seems. A Simple Favor is a remarkable tale of psychological suspense—a clever and twisting free-fall of a ride filled with betrayals and reversals, twists and turns, secrets and revelations, love and loyalty, murder and revenge. Darcey Bell masterfully ratchets up the tension in a taut, unsettling, and completely absorbing story that holds you in its grip until the final page.

My Review:

Whew!  These were some seriously messed up people and this was a book I could absolutely not put down!  I don't want to say too much about the plot itself because this is definitely a case of the less you know the better but pretty much right from the start it roped me in and kept me reading.  I just had to see how everything was going to spin out.  This is defintiely a plot driven thriller and not one of the characters is likable.  Stephanie's use of the word "moms" set my teeth on edge and I spent quite a lot of time just wanting to shake her but this dislike made the book an even more compelling read as I couldn't wait to see what kind of secret was revealed next.  I wouldn't say this is the most original read.  If you read a lot of unreliable narrators or books with the Gone Girl comparison you might even find this predictable.  For me it was a quick read with lots of twists and turns and thoroughly enjoyable.  I'm looking forward to seeing more from Darcey Bell!  Rating: Very Good

Purchase Links

HarperCollins | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

About Darcey Bell

Darcey Bell was born in 1981 and raised on a dairy farm in western Iowa. She is a preschool teacher in Chicago. A Simple Favor is her first novel. Follow Darcey on Twitter.