This book was so creepy/weird/odd that it could only be fiction. Or could it? The Pact explores what happens when well meaning people achieve power and when equally well meaning individuals seek answers. Hard to put down!

It has been awhile since I have read a novel filled with such suspense that I literally could not put it down. Alice and Jake and their journey in the Marriage Pact will forever haunt me.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with a complimentary copy of THE MARRIAGE PACT in exchange for my honest review.

I'll start by saying that The Marriage Pact was a page turner that kept me reading late into the night. However, my main reaction to the book is that it was bizarre. On one hand, we have a husband who is a marriage counselor from whom we receive insight on counseling sessions as well as statistical information on marriage and married couples that is married to lawyer/musician. At the same time we are cast into the extreme side of the story, where a marriage organization ,that is supposedly helping couples to improve their marriages, uses disturbingly violent punishments to bring balance back to the marriage. Definitely one of the strangest stories I've read in a long time.

Wow! What did I just read! That was a wild, crazy, and twisted ride... and I loved every minute of it!

It all starts out when Alice and Jake receive a bizarre wedding gift from one of Alice's new clients - A membership to "The Pact". This is a club that promotes long-lasting and healthy marriages... no one gets divorced and no one leaves "The Pact" alive. So, with one click of the pen, they decide to sign the contract - How bad could it be? After all, it's promoting healthy marriages, right?

Alice and Jake find several good things about "The Pact" rules - Answer the phone when your spouse calls, buy each other a small gift each a month, take a mini vacation somewhere every quarter. Doesn't sound too bad, right? But slowly it starts to take over their lives. Now they are having doubts about joining this club - or could it quite possibly be a cult? They want out, but can they just walk away from this bizarre group? What happens if you start questioning "The Pact"? Some members have died very mysteriously, but you are not allowed to talk about that or something mysterious will happen to you.

The Marriage Pact by Michelle Richmond is a well-written, fast-paced novel with a brilliant plot that had me on the edge of my seat, I was hooked from the very start. Buckle up for the ride of your life my "Friend"! Highly Recommended!

*I want to thank NetGalley, Michelle Richmond, and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for the ARC of this book.

I read "No one you know" by Richmond a couple of months ago, and I fell in love with her writing. This novel did not disappoint in any way! I am impressed by how the story unfolded, and how I was pulled into the story completely without realizing when I became completely engrossed by the plot and the characters. Fabulous read--I highly recommend it!!

I was keen to get this ARC because the blurb sounded so great. Newlyweds getting a too-perfect-to-be-true gift that helps their fledgling marriage, and then exposes them to something like THE GAME - the movie starring Michael Douglas. Yes, please.

The story unfolds pretty slowly. Jake and Alice fall in love, decide to get married. Alice is an alt.rock-star-turned-lawyer and Jake is a psychologist. Both of them are aware that they'll need to work on their relationship to keep it healthy. When one of their wedding gifts invites them to join THE PACT - and despite the warning labels the gift comes with - they can't resist.

It's soon obvious that THE PACT is more like THE CULT. The rules are many and strict, and breaking them results in both physical pain and separation. Alice is caught first, and disappears for two days into a desert compound that seems to be an abandoned prison. Then Jake messes up and his detention borders on sadistic torture. The tension rises with each chapter, as the couple realize they're trapped for life and that their privacy is nonexistent. At this point, the author could've tightened the screws even more, but instead...the ending.

Turns out the organization has been infiltrated by extremists, who want to punish Jake and Alice for present and past sins. Fortunately, there's a happy ending here and I was left a bit disappointed. Up to that point, the book reminded me a bit of the Harrelson-Moore flick, An Indecent Proposal, whose ending really showed the cost of certain choices on a relationship. That didn't happen here, for although Jake and Alice emerge with their relationship intact, I felt the ball was dropped when it came to showing how their approach to marriage is different than before.

Phenomenal. The Marriage Pact is an absolute page turner. It’s an urgent, twisty, compelling, sometimes terrifying story about what could happen when marriage is transformed from a union between two people into an enforceable social contract among thousands. It’s a cautionary tale about the things you’re willing to overlook in pursuit of the things you want most. I loved the irony of Jake being a marriage counselor and watching his attitudes evolve over the course of the book, even when common sense was throwing up red flags left and right. I’ll definitely recommend it to to all my married friends (heh), and everyone who loves psychological thrillers. In the long line of successors to Gone Girl, the Marriage Pact is one you HAVE to read.

Boy meets girl, they fall in love, they get married and live happily ever after.  That's the dream, eh?  Jake is a therapist and Alice is his rocker turned corporate lawyer wife.  They have it all, a house in San Francisco, thriving careers and true love.  Enter "The Pact".  Introduced to them by a rockstar client of Alice's, it seems like a great program for maintaining the loving and healthy marriage they have as newlyweds.  

"With The Pact, the best policy is to always do the thing that will attract the least amount of attention."

Cookie cutter people in cookie cutter marriages with zero marital strife.  Sound to good to be true?  It is.

"You hold things together every second of every day, then one time, just for an instant, one person loses concentration, lets go of the thread, and the whole thing unravels."

 Their marriage is no longer two people, it's part of a machine.  A strange, omniscient machine.  As they struggle to fit in, they only stand out more.  After all, when your marriage is governed by a set of laws you don't fully understand, you're bound to be punished.

"Each one of us becomes so used to the person we think we are.  In our minds, we carry a vision of ourselves, naïvely certain of our own moral boundaries, what we would and would not do."

The walls have eyes, the streets ears.  Will they escape with their marriage in tact?  Their lives?

Four stars.

Great psychological suspense novel. Interesting views on marriage.

This book had a really interesting, yet terrifying premise. Rated 3 stars as the violence described against those opposing 'the pact' was a little harsh at times and I wish the ending had more of a resolution to it. It was clear the decision that was made, yet you don't really know how they ended up. Would be interested in reading more from this author.

When the Marriage Pact was originally offered, I did not request it as my initial impression of the spot description was not favorable. A few weeks later I decided to go against my gut feeling and requested it for download. Clearly I should have gone with my gut.
I find it tedious to read books which constantly name drop celebrities, consistently use phrasing like "... a band you will not have heard of..." "... a (performer/artist/musician) you would recognize.. ", have plots which have a super secret cabal which can control people's behaviors and actions using various illegal methods and not face consequences, and have a poorly written ambiguous ending which really comes down to "death will set you free.". The Marriage Pact has all of these writer's sins in spades.
The generic plot is that of a former musician turned lawyer who marries a therapist and they both join "The Pact", an organization which can only be called a cult. The Pact exists to keep people married by forcing them to adhere to "The Manual" which lists all the sins and punishments. Much like "Fight Club", the first rule of "The Pact" appears to be that no one talks about the pact, and the reader can quickly see how this can only go badly as the story drags to its ultimately predictable, pointless conclusion.
Some readers will surely enjoy this book, I do not count myself among them.

The premise of this story is that once you are married, you should make every effort to keep your spouse happy and that divorce isn’t an option. With high divorce rates and couples taking each other for granted, this is great in theory but in no way is this a romance! This story is a unique suspense/thriller that I found quite disturbing.

Jake and Alice were invited to become a member of The Pact but didn’t read the rules before they signed a contract. Once you are a member of The Pact, you can never leave. Any infraction of the rules result in some severe punishments. At times, I felt almost claustrophobic with the punishments and that everything the members did or said, was somehow known by the leaders and felt very cult-like.

Ms. Richmond has a talent of building suspense in a story, writing well-developed characters, and providing a book that was difficult to put down. The story is told from Jake’s POV which gave an interesting aspect to the various parts of the story.

I don’t want to provide many specifics of the story – the rules, the punishments, the outcomes, etc., as this is one story you need to read for yourself.

The story is quite long but the suspense and drama was so unbelievable, I couldn’t stop reading.

The ending is quite interesting but leaves you wondering exactly how things will work out for Jake and Alice. When I finished reading the story, I sat for a long time, just pondering the whole storyline and how something like this could happen in a contemporary time period. I did enjoy the ‘karma’ that certain people received – the old ‘what goes around, comes around’ type of treatment.

This had such a creepy feeling that I almost felt like looking over my shoulders! It was definitely different from most stories that I read, whether romance/suspense/crime/thriller/mystery, etc.

Thanks to the author, NetGalley and the publisher, Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine Bantam, for the Advanced Reader Copy (ARC). I look forward to reading more of Ms. Richmond’s work.

Great book! I received a copy through NetGalley and really enjoyed it. The suspense is real throughout the novel in a way that reminds me of The Firm. The characters are well developed and keep you guessing until the very end. I felt I knew them so well that I knew what their final decision would be before I read it. Would definitely recommend to friends.

My apologies - I rarely do not finish books but I could not complete this one. The premise that two well-educated adults would bite off on this Pact made no logical sense to me - I stopped reading at about 10%.

YES YES YES! I love good thrillers like this that just hook me, and I can't put it down. I read this book in two days and that is just so rare for me ha! but that's how good it was. The story developed well as did the characters, and I never knew who my finger was pointed at. I can appreciate that because it didn't confuse me in a way I couldn't back track, but in a way that shocked me. Every. Time. Jake was a tough character because I disliked him so much, but then again the wife wasn't very pleasant either lol I think that's what made the story so much more interesting because I couldn't really root for either if I didn't like them but you kind of have to right? The only thing I didnt like was the ending. It was too fast and too much, and in the end I felt let down. Like all of this anxiety and anticipation, and that's how we are leaving things? Either way, I enjoyed it very much and highly recommend it.

Utterly engrossing and downright scary for married people to read! Intrigued by a mysterious gift received at their wedding, Jake and Alice agree to become members of The Pact. The events that follow are crazy - you just have to read it to see. I had a hard time putting this one down. At one point I thought of the movie The Matrix and the scene where one of the characters asks don't you wish you'd taken the other pill? I found myself wanting to go into the book and help these poor characters!

I do wish the book had an epilogue. The ending is odd and left me wishing for an epilogue.

This is the first book I've read by this author, but would definitely consider reading more!

Twisted and full of surprises, The Marriage Pact reminded me a little of The Firm. Alice and Jake receive an unforgettable gift on the day of their wedding: membership to The Pact, a club that promotes healthy marriages. No one has ever left it and none of their members has ever divorced. Some have died under mysterious circumstances, but let's not talk about that. Alice and Jake find some good things about it, but little by little it takes over their lives and, as much as it helps their marriage, it starts stressing them out. The way the plot turns subtly menacing is masterful. Is it really happening or could it all be a misunderstanding? Nobody is there against their will, or is being coerced into anything so why does it fell like Jake and Alice are being bullied? The tension builds up slowly until it is almost unbearable and then the author ties everything up in a great, great ending.

Jake and Alice are getting ready to get married when Alice an attorney gets good news on her case and invites the client to her wedding. To her surprise the client actually accepts the invitation. As with most weddings you bring a gift for the couple and this client gives them a gift they will never forget. They are given the opportunity to join the Pact which is a secret organization with the goal of helping marriages to be successful.

It was weird to me that Alice an attorney and Jake a therapist would sign up for something so quickly without taking the time to read about what they were getting into. I understand wanting your marriage to be successful but that's no reason to be careless. At first is was a bit hard to get into the story but after a while it picks up steam. Some of the conversations with Jake's patients were boring but the chapters were quick so I got through it. They were very naive at times and just made some crazy decisions.

What lengths would you go to in order to have a successful marriage? This book will take you on a journey to see if you can answer that question. Overall it was a good read and I would recommend it.

Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book and give an honest review.

I really liked the concept of this book however I felt it quickly lost my interest. There were too many instances when I found myself asking the main characters, "Why would you do that?" or "What were you thinking?" I was not intrigued enough by the two main characters to find out what happened in the end!