The Guilt Trip by Sandie Jones
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
**3.5-stars**
Rachel, Jack, Noah and Paige are a friendship foursome with a lot of history. Rachel and Noah have been best friends since college and there was a time when they considered being more than friends.
Alas, it wasn’t to be. Now twenty-years later, Rachel is happily married to Jack, while Noah is married to Paige.
When Jack’s brother, Will, decides on a destination wedding with his flamboyant fiance, Ali, the foursome, with Ali in tow, travel to the beautiful country of Portugal for the event.
It never takes long for drama to arise when Ali is around. It seems to follow her everywhere, and as predicted by the friends, is created before they’ve even left the airport.
Ali’s exuberant, over-the-top nature gets under everyone’s skin. There’s never a break with her. It’s always something.
Rachel is unnerved to observe that Ali seems to be paying special attention to her husband. While Jack doesn’t appear to be recipricating her advances, Rachel still begins to wonder, what exactly is going on there?
As they settle into their cliffside villa, things continuously get worse. Ali flaunting herself around is making everyone uncomfortable, especially now that Jack has revealed to the friends something he heard about her from a work colleague.
Is this even a woman he wants his brother to marry?
But Ali isn’t the only one with secrets. Everyone has something to hide and as suspicions begin to creep across the group of friends, all is threatened to be revealed.
This was a compelling story. I definitely had fun reading it; particularly the first half. I’m all for excessive domestic drama. I love long-buried secrets, deceptions, betrayals; it’s addicting. The setting was great and I loved the whole destination wedding scenerio.
I was hooked. Nevertheless, there were some finer details that didn’t sit quite right with me. It’s a good story, but not perfectly suited to my tastes.
Don’t get me wrong, I liked it. I’m not mad I read it. It was interesting, it was shocking, wild and not a bad way to spend a weekend!
Thank you so much to the publisher, Minotaur Books, for providing me with a copy to read and review. I always appreciate the opportunity to provide my opinion.
I think if you love quick, domestic suspense stories, you should definitely give this one a shot!