The Book:
Cross Her Heart by Sarah Pinborough, 2018
The Characters:
Lisa and her daughter Ava
Lisa’s friend Marilyn
Buy it on Bookshop.org | Amazon
The Plot (from Goodreads):
Lisa lives for her daughter Ava, her job, and her best friend Marilyn, but when a handsome client shows an interest in her, Lisa starts daydreaming about sharing her life with him too. Maybe she’s ready now. Maybe she can trust again. Maybe it’s time to let her terrifying secret past go. Then her daughter rescues a boy from drowning and their pictures are all over the news for everyone to see. Lisa’s world explodes, and she finds everything she has built threatened. Not knowing whom she can trust, it’s up to her to face her past to save what she holds dear.
Click for spoilers
The Twist:
Lisa had been responsible for her little brother’s death when she was a child. She was given a new identity by her probation officer and was hiding from her past as well as from Kate, her friend who was there the night Daniel died.
Kate was actually the one who killed Daniel. She thought this would free Lisa/Charlotte up to run away with her.
When she found Lisa/Charlotte, Kate posed as both Ava’s friend Jodi and as Jodi’s mother. Kate kidnapped Ava to draw Lisa out. Lisa’s friend Marilyn found them and rescued them.
The Ending:
Katie is arrested. Lisa becomes Charlotte again, and Ava has the baby. Marilyn survives with severe damage to her arm.
The Review:
I absolutely loved Dead To Her and had very mixed feelings about Behind Her Eyes, so I had high hopes going into Cross Her Heart but was also a little nervous I’d be blindsided again. You don’t get a lot from the blurb, which I normally like, except in cases where the book is marketed as one genre and ends up being an entirely different one. I ended up really enjoying this story!
It’s a good one to go in blind, so I don’t want to say too much. I was hooked by the hints to Lisa’s troubled past, and was eager to find out what her secret was. The beginning starts off somewhat slowly with a lot of mother-daughter conflict, but the pace picks up pretty early on.
There certainly is some suspension of belief required, but overall this was an enjoyably disturbing tale. I wish there was a little more to the ending–a lot was glossed over that I felt could have been explained more thoroughly.
This was a Book of the Month pick last month. Haven’t checked out Book of the Month yet? Use my code for $10 off your first box. (I get a $10 credit too, but that means more reviews for me to share with you!)
