I completed this as a Traveling Sisters group read and what a true and fun joy it was! Thank you ladies for such an enjoyable read and so many fun discussions! This would easily fit well into any book club out there! BUT-about halfway through the book, the story became both tedious and over the top, and I lost interest rapidly. Claire can do this. She’s brilliant at assuming a voice and an identity. For a woman who’s mastered the art of manipulation, how difficult could it be to tempt a killer into a trap?

That’s what you’d think if you saw me here, perched at the bar of this corporate-­cool New York hotel, trying to make my Virgin Mary last all evening. Just another young professional waiting for her date. A little more dressy than some of the other women here, maybe. I don’t look like I just came from an office. although built around the same idea as the earlier one, and containing some of the same scenes, is completely different in plot, characterization, and structure.” It's all about the emboldenment effect. Placing the Wild Card down a few too many times. Claire's latest woman singing "I've been done wrong" ends up dead. The police have plenty of questions for Claire. In this twisty psychological thriller from the New York Timesbestselling author of The Girl Before,an actress plays both sides of a murder investigation. I say it with such offhand nonchalance, such gratitude, that even I’d be surprised to discover it’s a lie.

Games

This is Traveling Sisters GR Reading Group Review and it can be found posted on our themed book blog Two Sisters Lost In A Coulee Reading.

She gets involved in a very convoluted manner with a professor who is totally into an erotic dead poet's works and it is this professor that Claire needs to ferret out. Along the way there are some pretty intriguing plot twists and everything about both Claire and the professor becomes murky and quite dark. Opps, forgot to mention that the professor's wife was murdered..... I read that Delaney had actually written a book like this nearly seventeen years ago, under a different title. The book was published but didn’t take flight. When Delaney went to republish it following his recent success with The Girl Before (which you should really go read), he felt that there were flaws in the original work. He rewrote it from scratch and says it is “completely different in plot, characterization, and structure.” Well, Mr. Delaney, I did not read the original version of this book, but I would like to go on record saying that this recreation of your original idea is a true masterpiece. This. THIS, is a master class in thriller writing. For all of the moving parts of this story absolutely nothing fell flat for me. The setting, the structure, the formatting, the character development - this absolutely blew me out of the water *maybe slight pun-intended since I finished this on a beach*. It’s always in the eyes—that slight, almost imperceptible stillness as an idea dawns behind them. He turns the possibilities of what I’ve just said over in his mind. Decides he’s reading too much into it. Overall, I found this to be quite an entertaining psychological thriller. The story had some great twists and turns, leading up to an intense and gripping ending that I never saw coming!Unfortunately, they have suffered a few miscarriages, and she wonders if the only baby she will successfully carry to term, would be Sky, the baby she relinquished. And what to say about those twists!?! I read this with a group of my traveling sisters and because we were always at very slightly different points in the book, our opinions and theories kept misaligning in a good way. That is how often Delaney has you rethinking everything in this book! Nearly every chapter led me in a different direction. What. Did. I. Just. Read. My mind is totally blown right now. I devoured this book in a matter of hours and I just could not get enough of it! This was my first J.P. Delaney (yes i know, I need to read the Girl Before) but wow this did not let me down! This is the second book that I have read by this author. Here’s what I thought about this “thriller”. Despite this, the chapters are quite short so it is easy to fly through this book as I finished this book in two sittings. My attention was kept throughout this book because there was constantly something happening, however some of the action that took place was predictable. I really loved that the book ended so happily.

Always appear available. Don’t approach them first. Always let them be the one to proposition you. Don’t actually sleep with them. Get the evidence, return it to the wife, and don’t speak of it to others. Claire has never struggled to seduce men. She finds this is a job she was made for. In college I was a double major in literature and psychology. Though in my doctoral degree I chose to pursue psychology, literature has a very special place in my heart. I took a French Literature course where we read Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal in the original French. This book is heavily crafted around Baudelaire and so I was immediately drawn in. Obviously, she and her husband get in touch with Sky, now re-named Anna. Her adopted parents aren't pleased, but they do share the difficulties they've had with Anna. Susie is convinced that her daughter is being mistreated at the hands of her adopted parents, and soon, her daughter shows up at her door. Susie sees this as her chance to make everything right. Her daughter sees the situation differently. It's been a hard time coming, but I've really come around to structural changes to your typical story telling (when done right). Delaney truly created something wholly unique here. We only have one POV (Claire) however, she views her life as a movie and we switch between traditional story-telling and script writing. I had originally and right away been turned off by this. For me, the goal of every book is to enter what I call the "reading zone" but what many call "deep reading" and when you really shake things up with formatting it can be hard to drop into. I'd say this took me about......a grand total of.....two chapters to drop into that zone because of the script writing. Overall, theme is a difficult and sensitive one but I think JP Delaney handles it very well and gives you food for thought.

Multibuys

There are a few plot holes with many twists and turns, and a surprising conclusion. If you can suspend disbelief and just go where the story takes you, it will be a fantastic read. For me, less is more. I would have preferred a few less twists and turns and it needed to be a little higher on the believability scale. The temperature starts to rise in more ways than one when one of her clients is found murdered in one of the hotel rooms on the same night Claire met up with her hubby. This is where the twisted show of cat and mouse really begins. When I say twisted, I am talking.... tangled, distorted and disturbing!

Oh, and there could be a whole double, triple cross thing happening as well. On top of that, nothing is really as it seems. At times this book is written like a play (or maybe a script) in keeping with the part of Claire being an actress and giving performance. There are also a lot of quotes from Baudelaire's Les Fleur du Mal (his book on S&M Poetry) thrown in. I didn’t care much for the erotic poetry (which may be because I didn't understand it). However, I still enjoyed the rest of the story, and I have to admit, I did end up Googling to find out more about “Les Fleurs du Mal” by Charles Baudelaire. I vacillated in my feelings about this book. At times, I found it totally unbelievable. But I found myself appreciating Claire’s observations, especially relating everything to acting. The writing isn’t overly dramatic. But a few good turns of phrase to paint a complete picture. “Only Kathryn is as full of restless energy as ever, a terrier eager for the kill.”She has a scholarship for an Actors Studio course, but it only pays tuition, not living expenses. She is allowed to work on campus but those jobs are few and far between. In other words, she’s broke.