The Book:
Too Good To Be True by Carola Lovering, 2021
The Characters:
Skye
Burke
Heather and her employer Libby
It’s best to go into this book blind–I don’t even recommend reading the summary! I think the blurb from the publisher gives too much away.
The Plot (from Goodreads):
Skye Starling is overjoyed when her boyfriend, Burke Michaels, proposes after a whirlwind courtship. Though Skye seems to have the world at her fingertips—she’s smart, beautiful, and from a well-off family—she’s also battled crippling OCD ever since her mother’s death when she was eleven, and her romantic relationships have suffered as a result.
But now Burke—handsome, older, and more emotionally mature than any man she’s met before—says he wants her. Forever. Except, Burke isn’t who he claims to be. And interspersed letters to his therapist reveal the truth: he’s happily married, and using Skye for his own, deceptive ends.
In a third perspective, set thirty years earlier, a scrappy seventeen-year-old named Heather is determined to end things with Burke, a local bad boy. Inspired by the sophisticated mother of her babysitting charges, Heather vows to leave her impoverished hometown behind and make a better life for herself in New York City. But can her adolescent love stay firmly in her past—or will he find his way into her future?
On a collision course she doesn’t see coming, Skye throws herself into wedding planning, as Burke’s scheme grows ever more twisted. Meanwhile, three decades in the past, Heather’s longed-for transformation finally seems within reach. But of course, even the best laid plans can go astray. And just when you think you know where this story is going, you’ll discover that there’s more than one way to spin the truth.
The Twist:
Heather had written Burke’s journals from Part One. They had created the Big Plan together to target Skye and take her money.
Skye was Libby’s daughter. I thought this was incredibly obvious, from the very first chapter from Heather’s POV. They weirdly never said the daughter’s name. Both Libby and Skye went to Barnard and worked in book publishing, so this was either a mistake in the ARC I was reading or a very obvious clue.
The Big Plan was Heather’s payback to Libby’s family for Libby letting Heather’s little brother drown. Burke wasn’t supposed to go through with marrying Skye, but he accidentally fell in love with her. When he did, Heather wrote the journals and emailed them to Skye’s friend on purpose to expose Burke. She also stole $2M from Skye’s bank account.
The Ending:
Skye figured out that Heather was behind the emails and the theft. She dropped the charges against Burke to petit larceny from grand larceny, and completely dropped the civil case. Burke got away with a fine and probation, and he and Skye got back together. Skye let Heather keep the $2M she had stolen. This all seemed a little pie-in-the-sky to me, but it is what it is.
The Review:
I’ll start off by saying that it’s best to go into this book completely blind–stop reading my review, don’t read the blurb, just start the book. That said, if you’ve gotten this far you’re probably too late.
I enjoyed Skye’s character most of all. It was interesting to see how her extreme OCD governed her daily life, and how looks and money don’t necessarily give someone an easy life. I wonder how the author decided to give Skye OCD.
The other characters also served their purposes well–for lack of spoilers, I’ll keep it to that!
Unfortunately, I was able to guess the twist right at the beginning. I honestly think the summary gave too much away. I kept hoping I’d be wrong and be surprised, but I wasn’t. That took away a little bit of the luster of the book, but I still enjoyed the characters and the writing and happily finished it.
The ending was a little too good to be true, but this is a work of fiction so I accepted it.
Overall, an entertaining drama if you’re willing to suspend belief and accept that the world just works differently for the incredibly rich!
Too Good To Be True will be available on March 2nd, 2021. Many thanks to Goodreads and St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
This one does have me curious now with a blurb like that! And I always like a good twist, although it’s a bummer that the description gives a little too much away.
don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely still worth the read! I’m honestly hoping they rework the synopsis before it’s published