If you like B.A. Paris, you will LOVE Wendy Clark!

I received this book through NetGalley for review.  This book has a publish date of 05/01/19 by Bookouture.  It was easily one of my first books I planned on reading from NetGalley because the cover was so enticing.

Synopsis (from Goodreads):  Everyone knows Leona would do anything for her daughter Beth: she moved to Church Langdon to send Beth to the best school, worked hard to build a successful business to support them and found them the perfect little cottage to call home. Leona and Beth hike together, shop together, share their hopes and fears with one another. People say they’re more like best friends than mother and daughter. 

When Beth finds an envelope hidden under the floorboards of their home, the contents make her heart stop. Everything she thought she knew about her mother is a lie. And she realizes there is no one she can turn to for help. 

This book tells the story through the eyes of Leona, Beth, and Ria.  The majority of Leona's story takes place talking to her psychiatrist.  Beth focuses more on her growing attraction for a man named David, and Ria tells the story of her pregnancy with the love of her life, Gareth.

Leona is high strung, and that's putting it nicely.  I could tell she has a past that was rougher than most.  I could feel it in the way that she spoke.  She kept alluding to Ria, and to telling a story that most people hadn't heard.  She was the reason I was so tense.  She would build up the story and then it would switch back to Beth or Ria.

Beth annoyed me.  She was a stereotypical 15 year old, oblivious to the world.  She met David near some caves she likes to draw at, and I had to keep from rolling my eyes.  He was 24 or 25, way too old for her, but somehow he fell in love with her.  I did think that was a little far fetched.  We all had our older crushes as 15 year olds, but given that I'm not currently married to Justin Timberlake, I would say 98% of them don't actually work out.  The way he was plugged into the plot did make sense in the end, but I'm not sure it justified pages of her obsessing over him.

Ria stressed me out.  It felt like I was watching Sleeping with the Enemy.  Like Julia Roberts' character, Ria thought she found the man of her dreams in Gareth.  She soon spends all of her time with him, moves in with him, and is the mother to his child.  Shocker-Gareth is actually a horrible piece of garbage disguised as a human.  I will say that parts of Ria's story could be potentially triggering.  As a domestic abuse survivor, I did have a hard time getting through some of Gareth's treatment of Ria.  It wasn't the worst thing I've ever read, but it did hit the soft spot.  

The book started a little slow for me because I had to get used to the switching between the three female leads.  Once I did, I spent the entire time trying to figure out how their stories connected.  About halfway through the book, a sense of dread came over me because I just knew something bad was coming.  It was like it was in the air for them.  It felt like watching a car accident with no way to stop the cars from crashing into each other.  I was so tense by the end of the book that I could actually feel my shoulders bunched up.  It ended exactly how I wanted it to.  The girls all got their way, you could say.  This book gives the feeling of stories like "Behind Closed Doors" or "Big Little Lies."  It was very entertaining to read as everything unfolded.  Solid book.  I'm so glad I read it.

🌟🌟🌟🌟/5