5 stars hands down! Very intriguing premise. Couldn't wait to see where the story lead. Best book I've read in a long time. .

This was a fantastic book! I loved the style, the adventures, and the main characters. Flawed but perfect!

While I found the plot of The Marriage Pact implausible, I still thoroughly enjoyed this book (now that's good writing!). So sit back and enjoy the fast paced ride. My only complaint is that the ending left me wanting more!!

I was hooked from the very first page and when I wasn't reading this one I was thinking of it. It was an all consuming read for me and I loved every single moment of it. What an amazing premise for a book. It was brilliant.

At first I was so drawn into the seeming perfectness of The Pact, as were our heroic couple. But then it became sinister and scary and absolutely something to be feared. I loved the way it all went so wrong, and to be honest I was a basket case wondering how they were going to figure things out and make things okay again. That journey is what makes the book so fabulous. And it was definitely worth each heart palpitation to arrive at the journeys end.

I highly recommend this one to anyone who loves a fabulous thriller, with a very likeable but imperfect couple who you cheer for the whole way through. I loved this one.

What a good story,reminded me of the stepford wives.Alice and Jake are a young professional couple who decide to join a group called the Pact.The rules seem livable,you just have to follow them and not tell anyone about the group.They enjoy the rich lifestyle,til one of them breaks the rules.A suspenseful story that had me turning pages from beging to end.

Maybe being married 50 years has focused my attention on working together and working it out. This book is scary from my experience. The couple newly married are ask to join the marriage pact by a client of the wife. As they become involved in this group they find their lives controlled by the group including punishment and really terrible situations when they don't follow the manual.

If this is the future of marriage I feel very sorry for the young people. My marriage of 50 years has weathered many storms but is solid and loving. I gave this a 3 star rating but not sure I should.

Intriguing thriller! This book was totally engrossing and the writing is really good. Newlyweds Alice and Jake get tapped to join this secret society known as The Pact. They see it as a way to strengthen their marriage and make it successful. They had no idea what they were getting into. This society has some major rules that can't be broken and Jake and Alice seem to, unintentionally, break a lot of them. There is some violence here, so if you're squeamish you might have a problem with this book. I thoroughly enjoyed it and would certainly recommend it as a good read.

Thanks to Michelle Richmond and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine through Netgalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

In Michelle Richmond’s ‘The Marriage Pact,’ Till Death Do Us Part Jokes Write Themselves

Marriage is a once-indomitable institution in decline. Books like Rebecca Traister’s All the Single Ladies and Kate Bolick’s Atlantic article of the same name confirm this for us. We’re getting married less, and staying married less often.

So what should we do about it? In Michelle Richmond’s thriller The Marriage Pact, power couples have decided to take the power of marriage back, by any means necessary. Meet the namesake Pact, a secret society intent on developing great marriages. Think of a chic, jetsetting, Scientology-esque group of obsessive mate-pleasers.

But just what makes a successful marriage? When Alice and Jake are invited to join the secret club after their wedding, they’re all in. Every newly-wedded couple can use some help, right? What sounds simple becomes a controlling and torturous power game, as The Pact takes things to another level. Spousal support of all kinds is demanded, and The Pact will be there to enforce the rules when they aren’t followed.

Sure, it sounds cheesy, right? And it is, a bit. The best thrillers are aware of the genre and not afraid to dive on into the deep end. Or they draw themselves on out of it and head away from the genre entirely. But I digress. I judge straight thrillers solely on how well they keep me craving the next page, drawing me forward into the story, not on how well they reinvent the wheel. The Marriage Pact had me falling deeper and deeper through a rabbit hole of exhausting demands with Alice and Jake. The novel’s exploration of society’s expectations of marriage was an interesting and thoughtful twist, like slowing down to peer at emotional wreckage while speeding ahead on a thrill ride.

While this was one thrill ride I thoroughly enjoyed, I was disappointed when it abruptly ended and I was forced to get off. The Marriage Pact‘s ending was the book’s only letdown, as it felt forced, but perhaps left an opening for a follow-up. I didn’t buy the character’s choices in the last few pages, but of course I’ll buy the sequel if there is one. I’m a lover, not a fighter. Pact, I’m here for you, ’till death do us part.

A combination of life as a Stepford Wife/member of Grisham's "The Firm", once you're in, you can't get out.....or can you? You literally want to shake the main characters and tell them to get out of The Pact before it's too late!

It’s quite hard to discuss The Marriage Pact without giving anything away so this is going to be a short review. I think it is best to go into this book without reading any spoilers. The Marriage Pact is intense, creepy, and disturbing. The story is unique and the writing style is very engaging. I found very hard to put the book down, I kept reading even as I was horrified by what was happening. There are a lot of twists that kept me on the edge of my seat till the last page. The Marriage Pact would make for a great movie, in fact the movie rights have already been sold, and I can’t wait to see it.

This book was.... interesting to say the least. At times I found it engaging and enjoyable, and at others, I was completely turned off by it. To begin with, I'm having trouble with the fact that two people who were supposedly as intelligent as Jake and Alice were did not see right away that this "pact" was a bad idea. She's a lawyer and he's a counselor (of marriage among other things), and neither one of them had to brains to think that this was quite obviously the stupidest thing they had ever heard? The rules were asinine, the punishments downright inhumane (done mostly it felt like for the sheer shock factor), and the "all-seeing eye of the Pact" just unbelievable. Now sure, when you read a fiction novel, you know you are most likely going to have to suspend some part of reality in order to enjoy it, but I just cannot fathom how these people knew of every little infraction this couple supposedly committed.

Overall, it felt like the Stanford prison experiment, but with marriage. Although, they had a prison as well don't get me wrong. The author did, for the most part seem to have a strong writing style (although I sincerely hope I had an early un-edited copy as the grammatical and spelling errors were far too numerous for my liking), however this concept just did not come together in the way I think they were hoping. There was one or two interesting twists to the story, which is why I rated it a three instead of a two, although the ending left a bad taste in my mouth as it is done in an almost cliff-hanger type of way leaving the reader wondering just what happened to dear old Jake and Alice.

All things considered, I am sure this story may still appeal to those who enjoy psychological thrillers.

DISCLAIMER: I received a complimentary copy of this novel in exchange for my honest review. This has not affected my review in any way. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are 100% my own.

Thanks to Netgalley. Bantam publishing and Michelle Richmond for this ARC. I do love this book.
I've never read anything quite like it. The pact is an interesting idea to keep a marriage strong, but the consequences are so severe. It had me wondering if something like this could exist. All the parallels running between all the storylines was so thought provoking. I couldn't see the end result for Alice and Jake, but then finally got why they were chosen.
I liked their choice in the end..
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I still need to let this book sink in a bit more first. !
Really, really a great book !

This story itself is flawed in terms of what a character would/would not do. An attorney would not sign a contract with minimal review. I did stick it out, though, and kept reading. Parts of it were interesting but towards the end it became a bit much. I almost felt as though the author didn't quite know how to end the story and thus, the ending was very disappointing to me.

I was very hooked at the beginning of this book I wanted and needed to know what was the pact about and what would happen to the couple that goes in to blindly this weird club or sorts. I loved the plotline and I could have even kept going and finish this book but by half way through there is so much unnecessary parts to the book that are added that it just drags out the book instead of adding more flavor to the already thrilling plotline. I started to feel frustrated and inpatient with the book instead of curious and fascinated so I couldn't keep going I really think that if the author took out so much of the boring unnecessary parts and kept more to the point of the plotline this could be a fantastic book.

I could not put this book down! It was very thought provoking about marriage, and also suspenseful and unpredictable. Without spoilers I found the end unsatisfying. I think one more page or even line could have made it a five star book. Thanks to Netgalley for the book!

I enjoyed the beginning of this more than the end. It became a little over the top. After reading the description, I thought I would enjoy it more than I did. Overall a good read.
Thanks to Netgalley and Random House

Wow - other reviews are not kidding when they say this is a can't-put-down read. I was drawn in immediately and enjoyed the fullness of the characters paired with the increasing paranoia (I felt.. who can you trust!) - overall excellent.

This was a very interesting read. As I was introduced to more characters, I really got a sense of the ideology of the group. It was crazy to think about the rules within the pact and just how far they would go to keep members in line. Great, easy read.

Well... I really wanted to like this book. The premise really hooked me and I definitely wanted to figure out what was going on throughout the book. It just felt really long and the pacing was off. There would be dozens of pages where NOTHING was happening and the main character was just info dumping that I did not enjoy. I just found it extremely hard to believe that these seemingly smart people would get into this without ever asking what it actually was. And that ending was a joke. Don't want to give anything away, but it felt extremely rushed and almost like a rushed/poorly planned ending because the author couldn't think of a better way for them to get out.

Nit picks:
-Main character explained that his wife was in a band and what the band was and why and how and when about 40 million times throughout the story. You only need to tell it once, the reader can remember that she was in a band.

-It was really hard to get to know the characters and because of that you never really care about them. You start in with them right during the wedding so you don't get much of who they were before the marriage. They never really talk, it's more of the main character giving you his thoughts all the time.

Overall, I would not recommend this book. I finished it only because I wanted to know the mystery.

**Received a copy from NetGalley in exchange for review**