Catherine is married to Tom a controlling, manipulative older man who literally controls every aspect of her life.
They go out for their fifth anniversary and on the way home Tom drives recklessly causing a crash ending in a death of the passenger in the other car. Tom moves Catherine into the drivers seat staging the scene to make her look like the driver and goes all out to blame her for the accident. There are not many likeable characters in the book, Catherine herself is pitiful and does make you feel sorry for her but I also was extremely annoyed at her helplessness and reliance on everyone else.
The narrator did a good job of telling the story and used differing voices which was helpful to differentiate the characters.

I would give this book 3.5 - 3.75 stars, but rounding up to 4 stars due to scale.

Full review online: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/205653298

I was not expecting this book to go the way it went! The book kept me engaged and wanting to know more as I got further into the book. It was well written, and the character development and plot were thought through with so much detail added in.

We start with Catherine and her husband Tom’s 5th wedding anniversary. They are going out to celebrate by going out to dinner at an expensive restaurant. Tom is controlling and made sure he planned everything to a tee for this night.
Throughout this book, you go through many emotions learning about the spell Catherine’s husband had her under this whole time. As she starts to understand what a monster he is she just wants out!

Thank you, NetGalley, for allowing me to listen and review this book! Thank you, Cole Baxter, for writing a well-developed and engaging book! Thank you, Bookouture Audio and Narrator Stephanie, for creating an engaging audio. The tone of voice and delivery made listening to this book that much better!

I felt like I was watching a movie throughout this book that’s much more than a wife betrayed by her husband. The more it unraveled, there was so much more than poor Catherine could’ve imagined. The events that transpire are unreal. This is a gripping domestic suspense with jaw-dropping twists.

Stephanie Cannon is the perfect narrator for this one! I love her light portrayal of Catherine that portrayed her as the character she is.

Thank you, Cole Baxter, Bookouture, Bookouture audio & netgalley for my ecopy & #audiobook! All opinions are my own.

This book was ridiculous....the main character looks like marries someone who does nothing but control her and abuse her. She continues to take more and more and at the end finally gains some courage....NO just no....

So far this book is pretty slow going. I find myself annoyed with Kathryn although when I think about it, women who are groomed for a long time will act the way that Kathryn has. The book starts off with the thought of celebrating an anniversary and going out to dinner. Half
Way through dinner the readers finds out just what kind of a husband Kathryn has. Tom is everything that you think you would want, successful, handsome and attentive to his lovely wife. However there is more to Tom than meets the eye. Following a horrible car accident, Kathryn wakes up to a nightmare of finding out they were involved in a car accident and she is told that she was the driver. The story goes on to some unbelievable twists and turns.

It started off strong and at a steady pace moving from past and present timelines. Catherine’s backstory wasn’t long coming together and it gave a real insight into events in the present day. I was really engaged for the first half of the listen but it went downhill for the second half to the point of unbelievable and just to far fetched and I found it hard to stay engaged. Cole really knows how to write completely despicable characters and Tom is right up there for me. It started strong but unfortunately didn’t keep up the momentum and went too far off course.

Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture Audio for the opportunity to listen to and review #TheAnniversary

I really enjoy Cole Baxter's writing and this is my favorite I've read from him in a while. These types of domestic thrillers are my favorite because I spend the entire book routing for the wife to overcome her evil husband. I just loved the female empowerment aspect to this one and thought the addition of Jessica's character was the perfect partner for Catherine. I did think the ending was a bit convenient and anticlimactic but otherwise I enjoyed every aspect of this. This story felt all too familiar coming from a small town myself, so it was easy to relate to the frustration of a corrupted police force and an entire community believing a man with power over the female with proof of the truth. I did not see the ending twist/explanation coming and thought it was a great full circle moment. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Cole Baxter is usually a go to author for me but this just fell flat for me. I loved the synopsis and the cover was definitely something that intrigued me to read this.

The reason it fell short is because it just never picked up and was slow at times. Most of the books that are written by the author leave you with your mouth hanging open but this one just didnt seem to get any better.

Thanks NetGalley for letting me read and review.

3⭐️⭐️⭐️




✨ domestic thriller.
trigger warning with domestic abuse.
Corruption
✨page count : 320 pages

✨Catherine and Tom has an age gap . Huge gap. They got together when Catherine is young with the blessed of his father.
It started when they get an arguement in the car. All over manipulation and gaslighting .
Catherine was been bedridden after the accident and need to rely on nurse . Up until she got better and even more confusion on the end. She needed help but I one want to help her because Tom is very influential with the cops.

✨ I have been a fan of Cole Baxter since the perfect suitor. This book was just mainly bland and making the characters lovable but it’s just not it.

✨full of emotions and flowed into drama. It was a good read.


✨ Thankyou netgalley for the opportunity to get this earc for a honest review.


❤️shaye.reads

This domestic thriller definitely caught you from the beginning...I really wanted to know how the events would unfold in this marriage that seemed doomed from the beginning. I was intrigued to find out which characters were to be trusted or who would turn on whom next. But overall there were no big twists. The wildly unbelievable events didn't shock me but rather sort of bewildered me. The audio version of this book was easy to listen to, but where I thought the narrator was strong in the role of Catherine, it didn't transfer as well to the male characters.
Baxter has many books already in this genre so I will try some of his past offerings.
Thanks to #NetGalley and Bookouture for this ARC.

The Anniversary by Cole Baxter was my first read by the author. The premise of this psychological thriller was intriguing and started off promising but got to the point where nothing was believable and everything was just too far-fetched.

Narrator Stephanie Cannon did a great job with her characterizations especially with her narration of naive Catherine which helped me get through until the very end.

Unfortunately, The Anniversary missed the mark for me.

Thank you Bookouture Audio, author Cole Baxter, and NetGalley for this Advanced Listening Copy.

I enjoyed listening to this book so much! Between the suspense, character development, and redemption, I was sucked in from the beginning! This novel starts out with a bang (literally!) and ends on one, too. Such a great book! I highly recommend.

This book hit the ground running. Katherine and her husband Tom were celebrating their 5th anniversary. He's a dominant controlling man, a man who picks the outfit she wears every day and he insisted that she try the e pensive champagne even though she is on medication for anxiety.
The journey hone he begins to accelerate and the combination of the glass of alcohol and tablets make her nauseous. She asks him to slow down and suddenly there's a collision.
The other party is deceased and Katherine's husband is saying to the police his wife wad driving.
Katherine was in the drivers side however this is a story of gas lighting, coercive behaviour.
Tom's behaviour gets worse by getting the nearby neighbours colluding and also blaming Katherine.
I absolutely loved this book, yes OK it was alittle far fetched at timesbut why not, there were lots of twists and turns.
Stephanie Cannon is one of my favourite narrators and she nails Katherine's anxious voice, the males voices, she's brilliant
Thank you to Netgalley and Bookouture Audio for allowing me an early access I loved this and I shall listen to more of Cole Baxters books.

While I typically lean towards higher ratings, this book unfortunately only merits 1 star from me. The narrative lacked suspense, with the main character coming across as overly naive and the husband resembling a caricature of an evil villain. The plot felt predictable and unnecessarily prolonged, making it difficult to engage with. Regrettably, I was unable to finish the book. Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture Audio for providing a copy for review.

This book starts out fast paced and full of mystery! There is a very obvious good vs bad character depiction from the get go. Trigger warnings for domestic abuse, abuse, narcissism, gaslighting, and grooming. The main character endures an awful lot of horror which lends itself into the categories of mystery and thriller. However, I found this book to be fairly predictable, absent of plot twists, a bit redundant and at times highly unrealistic. For these reasons I lost interest in the second half of the book and am rating it 2⭐️.

Thank you Net Galley and Bookouture for providing an ARC of The Anniversary by Cole Baxter for review. All opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own.

🎧Audio Book Review🎧

The Anniversary
Cole Baxter

🌟🌟🌟🌟

Wow!! What a rollercoaster!!

This was a complete gaslighting fest from start to finish!
It was totally obvious how this was going to go down right from the start - we even knew who the bad guy was - but wow did this escalate to epic proportions!

It's taken me a while after finishing this to finally write the review for a few reasons....and I actually can't remember the main characters' name :/
But basically after their 5th wedding anniversary meal out, Tom crashes into another car after speeding.
The other driver is killed and he drags his wife into the driving seat to have her take the blame.

I don't really want to give away any more plot because ...spoilers!... But there is just so much going on in this story that you never know what might happen next.

Things escalate fast and we find ourselves rooting for the wife - but strangely at the same time, I found myself thinking what on earth is wrong with her!! Leave the guy!
I know there are some relationships that do present like this and know it's often not easy to leave - but this just frustrated me, especially as things progressed.

As for all the corruption etc, I do get it - but there was just so, so much, that it began to feel a little unreal.

This was packed with action and tension the whole way through which helped me race through it - but just try and overlook the epic proportions of the events that ensue.


💕Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for my ARC copy - this is my honest review 💕

Secrets and lies are the name of the game in Cole Baxter's twist filled book, The Anniversary. This proved to be a fast, dramatic, and dark twisted read.

People celebrate their anniversaries in many ways: some prefer to celebrate them at home and some, like Tom and Catherine, prefer to indulge in a lavish meal at a restaurant. But most make it home safely, but not Tom and Catherine. On the way home, there was a horrible tragic crash. When Catherine wakes up in the hospital, she learns she has been charged with being the driver in an accident which resulted in a fatality. But she wasn't driving and has the bruises to prove it. This is only the beginning as Catherine learns more about her husband, things become more dire, more dangerous, and more twisted.

This book started strongly with a horrible accident, disbelief, blame, lies, secrets, and then with revelations which left Catherine reeling. Cole Baxter knows how to write controlling and despicable characters! I mean seriously, Tom was the worst. Try reading this book and not feeling some strong feelings about his character. Catherine was very young when she first met Tom who is 15 years her senior. She is naive, has little life experience, and is a little too trusting. I felt for her for most of the book, while also wanting to tell her to run for the hills.

This book (and characters) has a lot going on in a short amount of time. There are secrets, gaslighting, lying, manipulation and drama galore in this book. It's entertaining and had me thinking of the show Desperate Housewives while reading due to the involvement of the neighbors in this book.

I had both the audiobook and kindle version of this book. I thought the narrator of the audiobook did a great job bringing the book to life.

3.5 stars

This was my first book by Cole Baxter. I was able to snag the audiobook off @netgalley and I gave it ⭐️⭐️⭐️ stars on @goodreads .

Something I liked about the book…

- Listening to a good narrator always boosts the experience of a story and its characters. Stephanie Cannon did a great job at bringing out the timidness and meal personality of the Mrs.

Something I didn’t like…

- One thing I didn’t really care for while reading was how the storyline veered off into left field. Initially, you’re following along with the married couple but then suddenly the entire town is involved and they stage a Waco-like stand off. It just seemed far fetched.

Overall, I didn’t hate it but it wasn’t my favorite and that’s ok.

I listened to this book as i am visually impaired so can only access audio books.

Listening to this book will probably be very different from reading it so my review may not be appropriate to veryone.

The book started with a stryline of cohersive control by the main, very unlikeable character Tom, however it evolved into something completely different, unexpected, but unfortunetly not in a good way.
The other main charater, Catherine was portrayed by the narrator as extremely whiney and not very clever - which i am assuming was intentional, however, it was very annoying.

The story started off well, but descended into unrealistic mayhem!

This was my first Cole Baxter book, not sure if i will listen to another.

Was not twisty or turny, i was quite disappointed with this one i am afraid.

3 stars from me