This is a  hugely suspenseful tale,  especially for a debut novel.  As one review wrote – “What do you do when you realize you are married to a sadistic psychopath?”  This is what the 1st person protagonist,  Grace Angel, has to decide when she faces the problem.

The book was such a huge best seller and hyped to the max (except in the print media),  but … too much foreshadowing and the writing is only mediocre.  The basic thing is chill and thrill – borderline horror,  but not quite.

*******
Behind Closed Doors
by B.A. Paris
2016 / 353 pages
read by Georgia Maguire 8h 23m
rating A – / crime thriller
*******

It’s very important to Jack Angel, a moderately prominent attorney,  that his wife and home life look perfect.  He makes sure of it when he chooses Grace, a beautiful, intelligent single woman with a younger sister who has Downs Syndrome and who is in boarding school.   Millie is a huge part of Grace’s life.

First clue something is amiss – Jack is just too, too perfect – except that he doesn’t want Grace to work,  takes total charge of the house and furnishings he is buying for their wedding,  and is all any woman could possibly want.  The troubles start at the wedding and get suddenly worse on the couple’s honeymoon.

The story is told using the now common structure of  two interweaving sections – Past and Present.  The book starts out in the Past where  Grace relates how she met Jack and the story of the early days of their marriage.  The Present parts start when they have been married for a few weeks and Millie is ready to graduate from her school in a few months and come to llve with them – this is in present tense.  And it is tense because the reader knows something is not right with Jack and their marriage.

Much of the book is about some seriously deviant behavior – violence against women for pleasure – terrorizing them,  brutalizing them.   Be warned.