I gave this three out of five stars.

Freida McFadden brings us along as Brooke, a nurse practitioner, begins a new job at a maximum security men’s prison. Early on, we learn one of the inmates (serving a life sentence) is a man she helped put in prison when she was a teenager. He was also her first love… and the father of her child. As one of two nurse practitioners at this prison, Brooke must treat each and every patient, including Shane. Of course, Shane has no idea he has a biological son, and as soon as he sees Brooke, he begins trying to claim his innocence. As you would expect, Shane’s sad prison life, and claims he has been wrongfully imprisoned tug at Brooke’s heartstrings, and ultimately she ends up second guessing her judgement from a decade prior. Did Shane really murder her friends? Or was it the other survivor from that night..?

This book remains in Brooke’s perspective for the entirety, but alternates between present and past-tense. We read about Brooke’s life, both in and out of the prison, and we also read about the events that led to Shane’s incarceration. A little bit of Brooke’s love life is thrown into the mix too, and it gets just as messy as you’d expect.

As of late, I have become a Freida McFadden FAN, and I found this book just as easy to read as the first two Housemaid books (the third is TBD, but I can’t wait to let you know!!). It was suspenseful, and the short chapters and changing perspectives kept me engaged.

There was a time, though, for a good bit of the book (probably about 25 percent) just over halfway through, I was wondering why I was still reading. I really thought it was very obvious how this book was going to end. This feeling, ultimately, is what led to me giving this book three stars instead of four. But, I trust Freida, so I kept reading.

And man, am I glad I did! As with the other Freida books I’ve read, everything was a bit outrageous, and events, as they occurred in the book, were not what I would call realistic, but I did not see the ending coming! There were little details thrown in, and she tied them straight back to the rest of the book, as it seems she always does so well.

One thing I look for in a thriller/suspense novel, is the feeling of watching a movie in my mind. Even though I was feeling a bit drab through the middle, this was always something Freida’s writing achieved in this book.

I was kind of hoping for a different ending to this one, but I still enjoyed it. This was another one, where once I was almost finished, I couldn’t put it down.