Great concept for a book. What would you do if you were able to fake your death but be privy to what is going on after you have died? Do you find out people really didn't care for you very much? Or, do you find out you were loved? Well what if we add into the mix the main character is a lawyer and a thief and decides the answer to all that is plauging him in his life, he needs to fake his own demise. This book is a good read. It is told from two different perspectives and pulls you in. The characters are developed in a way that I found myself yelling at some of the passages in the book. LOL....I encourage you to read this book. Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the ARC of the book in return for my honest review.

So you stage your death, prepare to run off with the millions you siphoned off from the law firm where you work, and then decide that it would be a hoot to check in on your funeral. Imagine your shock when you discover that (1) you were hardly beloved by your coworkers and (2) it's also possible you weren't that beloved by your wife.

Such is the quagmire in which Alton Carver finds himself.

Alton is so deliciously, obliviously lacking self-awareness that you will find yourself laughing far more than you will feel gripped by the mystery in this book. What kind of guy is all set to vanish but can't go because he needs to keep spying on his wife and child? Alton is almost paralyzed by a compulsion to know what his wife is doing. He bases his decisions not on what is best for his "grieving" family but rather on what is best for him.

You discover that this is a particular pattern in Alton's life.

All along, Spencer Fleury does keep you wondering what will happen. Will Alton get away with his various nefarious plans? Will someone catch onto the fact that he is very much still alive? Fleury tells his tale with such ripe, snarky prose that you will be sucked into this story quickly and intractably. There are too many lines that will make you laugh out loud. My favorite comes toward the end, when Alton confesses something that he knows he shouldn't confess. The way Fleury has him deliver this line had me just about convulse with laughter.

Let me know what you think about this one. I enjoyed the heck out of it.

What a fun read ! This is a well crafted fun read about a cocky lawyer in legal trouble who decides to fake his own death and move to Central America to start over. I love this book for its reality, elements so perfectly crafted and the human side of a man avoiding the mess he made of his life by creating a new life and the consequences he faces. . We see all the problems here with starting over, new identities. new languages and adjusting to a life he never envisioned without his family. A fun read and very thought provoking.

I love this book and highly recommend it .

A very different story. After lawyer Alton fakes his death, we follow him and his unknowing wife Nicole over the next several month. The storytelling is different. I'm not sure I really like this but I felt unable to stop reading. So, it was successful in pulling me in.

I just can't come up with what I want to say about this book. I struggled to even like any of the characters. A more selfish couple might be hard to find.

The pace of the story moved along okay and the dialogue flowed, but I couldn't understand the actions of the main characters.

A fun, light read about Alton who has stolen three million dollars from his firm and faked his own death. Instead of fleeing to Costa Rica which was his original plan, he can't resist seeing who turns up to his wake and is astonished to see that his wife Nicole already has a lover. However it is his four year old daughter Clara who keeps him hanging around despite an ongoing police investigation into his apparent death. Told in alternating chapters by Alton and Nicole, the book keeps the reader fully engaged and intrigued as it rollicks along.

I saw this book and was intrigued by the title and also the blurb, so I thought I'd give it a go.
Alton fakes his own death and the book tells the story of what happens next to him and his wife, who knows nothing of his faked suicide until the Police arrive on her doorstep.
The book is told from alternating perspectives between Alton and his wife Nicole and I must admit my views kept changing about each character the nearer to the end I got.
I still can't say who I was rooting for as I can't make my mind up!
A different story which I'd recommend if you want a good, easy read.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advance copy to read and review.

Excellent book. I adored the storyline and the characters. A real page turner. I would this recommend this book.

Alton decides he has 2 choices - fess up to his crimes and go to jail, or stage his own suicide. As his boat goes up in flames and he sees his face on the news, Alton can't help but keep peering back into his life. Showing up at his daughter's preschool, using the spare key to let himself back into his house, he just can't leave his old life behind.
Told from alternating viewpoints between Alton and his wife this book is witty and full of dark humour.

I was afforded the opportunity to read this book with an Advanced Reader Copy from NetGalley, prior to its publication on October 3rd.

The description intrigued me - a lawyer who is under investigation by the FBI has decided the best way to escape is to fake his death. He's got some money stowed away, he has some set aside for the wife and daughter he's leaving behind, and he's got a plan to head to Costa Rica. But even from the get-go, the reader realizes he's kind of an ass.

We've all probably at some moment or another wondered what our own funeral will be like. Alton gets the chance to actually see his, and what he finds is not at all what he expected. Because of this, he just can't quite seem to get gone.

Told as if he and his wife, Nicole, are being interviewed - either by the same therapist or possibly a therapist for her and an investigator for him? - the narrative switches between their first-person viewpoints.

I feel that this is meant to be a comedic take on the unreliable narrator trend that started with Gone Girl. Alton starts off seeming pretty normal, if a bit of a jerk, but as he goes along, you find yourself in disbelief that this guy graduated law school. Stupidity barely seems to cover it. Nicole definitely seemed like a more sympathetic character at first, but she also isn't close to perfect.

I personally didn't much like this book. While funny at times, I found both narrators to be so unsympathetic that I almost didn't care enough to finish. The problem, of course, of knowing that they're telling the story as past tense (and Alton gives away pretty early on that people find out he's faked his death, so there's no premise that he may get away with it) is that, well, you know he doesn't get away with it. That took away any kind of urgency I had to get to the end of the story.

The only person I really liked in the story was the four-year-old daughter, and we don't ever get to read her thoughts...

I was a little afraid that I was judging harshly, so I read a couple of reviews on other sites, just to get a sense of what other readers are saying. The reviews I read seemed to be overwhelmingly written by guys who thought the book was really funny... I don't normally think of myself as having too much of a girly personality or someone who doesn't appreciate what men like (I'm surrounded by males in my everyday life) but just maybe this is one of those stories that appeals more to guys, because women would want to smack him every step of the way. ;)

Unfortunately, I can't recommend this one.

The classic story of the afterlife is of course Jimmy Stewart in Its A Wonderful Life looking back at all the good things he did and what his presence meant to do many people. This quick-reading novel is the flip-side of that theory. Gee, what happens if you come back and secretly watch your wake and find that no one could really stand you, including your wife who has already moved on. What would it be like to watch your family and see how they survive without you?

This novel is narrated in such a matter-of-fact way that it kind of sneaks up on you and you don't necessarily realize that this is s classic crime fiction downfall novel where the lead character sinks deeper and deeper into hell. Alton has a brilliant plan to abscond with three million dollars and spent the rest of his days on a hammock in Costa Rica, but like nearly every literary character who successfully obtains a sack of/ suitcase filled with money, you just know Alton is going to do something stupid and blow the plan all to hell - something stupid like hanging around town when he's already dead (or so it seems).

This novel is told in alternating narrations between Alton and Nicole, which proves to be a great choice of presentation, giving those multiple viewpoints. In the end, one has to conclude that it's just a damn good read