While I didn't find this story to have anything surprising to it, I must say I quite enjoyed this novel. Margot Hunt is the pseudonym for a bestselling author who has published 12 books before this one. And it shows because the quality of the writing is very strong. I couldn't stop myself from flipping one page after the next because the writing style allowed for this novel to maintain a fairly fast pace (even though there wasn't actually a lot happening) and be an easy read. 

What made this novel really work is the characterization of the 2 female characters, which was great. The story is from Alice's perspective and she is a great protagonist. Alice is a logician, and her logical mind is evident in her various interactions with other people. She is described quite a few times as being cold or too calm, and this has been attributed to her logical thinking ... but reading from her point of view showed that this isn't necessarily true. Alice feels a lot. She feels protective towards her family and friends, driven by her love for them to do whatever it takes to make them happy. She was a character I could really connect with, and I enjoyed reading from her perspective as she went from loyal defender of Kat to doubting their friendship.

Kat's character was also very interesting. I could tell right away why she wasn't to be trusted.... but also why she was so easy to be best friends with. Heck, even I wanted to be friends with her! I enjoyed reading about the relationship between Kat and Alice and how it may have seemed like a tight bond at first, but was just a manipulation by Kat.

The conclusion of the story, while predictable, was still quite good because the author really stuck to the theme that she had introduced from the start. This is a story about what it means to be a friend, and how friendship can be manipulated. I'm giving this a solid 3/5 stars and would recommend it to anyone who likes thrillers!

Two women meet and become fast friends - under unusual circumstances. I found neither character particularly likeable, which made Best Friends Forever a difficult read for me. The premise was strong; one woman's husband dies, the spouse is always a suspect, and by association, her friend gets pulled into the investigation. The story itself was good, I just found it easy to put down as I wasnt invested in the characters. That may have been deliberate on the part of Margot Hunt, in order to divert the reader. I would probably give it 3.5 stars.

After a chance meeting in an airport, Alice and Kat form a friendship. They quickly become best friends, until one of them losses her husband. The police find the death to be suspicious, and look at Alice as a suspect.

The story was told from Alice's point of view and had shifting timelines. The friendship formed three years before the suspicious death, and the story covered the beginning of the friendship to present day.

A well-written, fast-paced thriller with relatable and interesting characters. I enjoyed the twists and was curious how it would all end. A good read for fans of psychological thrillers.

Alice and Kat meet in an airport while waiting for their delayed flight to arrive. They hit off and became fast friends until Kat's abusive husband dies and the police begin to question Alice and Kat is no longer taking Alice's calls. Alice is afraid that she is being set up and begins to question her relationship with Kat. I loved these characters and raced through this book easily! A very good psychological thriller. Highly recommend!

Can you ever truly trust your friends?

Alice thought she knew everything about her best friend Kat, from the secrets of her wealthy family to the fact that behind closed doors Kat’s husband Howard is a drunk and a bully.

But now Howard has been found dead, having plunged to his death from the balcony of their highly desirable mansion, and the police are convinced he’s been murdered.

So why in her time of need has Kat stopped answering Alice’s phone calls and texts. Why won’t Kat’s family allow Alice to visit her anymore? And why are the detectives looking directly at Alice in relation to Howard’s death?

This is quite an unexpectedly good book which I'm not going to say anything about, except I loved it! 5*

I devoured Best Friends Forever in one sitting I could not put it down.
Great twists and turns throughout.
I did not see that ending coming but loved it.
Be warned once you start reading you will be hooked and you will loose several hours.
A well deserved 5 stars from me.

I truly love an unreliable narrator. Since Gone Girl, it can be difficult to find an author who can do it right. Margot Hunt is such a one.

Without giving too much away, Best Friends Forever is a fascinating story of the friendship between women, and how toxic it can be. We can rely on each other for so much, and spill our secrets openly. But what if someone wants to use that openness, that closeness, to manipulate us, take advantage of us?

Hats off to Hunt for creating an intricate, exciting thriller.

Lunches with expensive wine, shared secrets, long conversations, and even girls vacations... Kat and Alice have an amazing friendship. Their chance meeting in an airport seems to have enriched both of their lives. They round each other out... left-brained Alice and right-brained Kat.

I found Alice easy to identify with, especially at first. She hardly gets any time to herself and doesn't really have girlfriends, so when charming Kat strikes up a friendship, she's all for it. Kat makes her life more exciting... now she has something to do other than care for the kids, clean the house, and work. She has an ally to talk to. Though their lives are incredibly different, it begins to be hard to imagine her life without her as their friendship blossoms. Everything changes when Kat's husband falls to his death from a balcony at their home. The police are suspicious, and Alice is confused. Kat wouldn't be capable of such violence, even if she wasn't happy with her husband... and she wasn't even in town when he died. Then why are they sniffing around, refusing to let the death be considered an accident, a stumble from a man who was known to love his drinks?

Making life even more confusing, Kat has completely cut off communication from Alice. She won't return her texts or calls, won't speak to her at all. She never thought that would happen... but how well did she really know her friend?

This was a great story that definitely threw me for a few loops. It's easy to feel Alice's confusion and desperation as she's questioned by the police and her attempts to reach out to her friend are denied. Hard to figure out, this one will keep you turning pages. Fast paced and intense. I'm looking forward to more from Margot Hunt!

I received an ARC of this book from Net Galley and HQ Digital, thank you! My review is honest and unbiased.

I really enjoyed this well-done novel by Margot Hunt. Alice, a PhD in mathematics who writes logic books for children, meets Kat at an airport and they become fast friends. After three years of friendship, Alice is arrested for the murder of Kat’s husband Howard, a drunk who, according to Kat, was a physically abusive serial cheater.
The book goes back and forth from the present day through the progression of Alice’s friendship with Kat. Kat is ridiculously wealthy while Alice is constantly struggling for money. She quit her job as a professor when the twins were born, and between their private-school tuition, husband Todd’s job as an architect, and his penchant for overspending, the Campbell family is scrapping by.
The difference in their financial situation is important to the plot, but it does get a little tedious for Alice to constantly let you know about the stress of money for her family. What’s compelling about the novel, however, is watching how Kat manipulates Alice, to the detriment of her relationship with her husband and kids. Anyone who has ever had a friend who isn’t always good for them will identify.
I enjoyed the ending, although I predicted part of it well beforehand. Hunt is a talented writer, and I would definitely read her again.
Thanks so much to NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book.

Fantastic book, but one that will definitely make you a more suspicious person! Very well written, totally absorbing and a great twist!

This was un-put-downable! Such a fantastic read! While not wholly realistic, it still was believable and pulled you in. I will say I figured this out well before the end, but it was still worth the great read. 4/5

This book had me hooked from the very beginning. with no idea how it was going to go. The end completely threw me. I had to re-read the last chapter to make sure I had got it right. Brilliant and well worth more than the five stars I can give. Margot Hunt is the latest name on my favourite authors list

There's a quote that says: “You don’t need a certain number of friends. All you need is a number of friends you can be certain of.” Alice and Kat are best friends, certain they can trust each other with absolutely anything. So why are there two police officers at Alice's front door, asking her about the death of Kat's husband, Howard?

Alice Campbell meets Kat Howard at the airport on a flight home to South Florida, where they bond over martinis and soon become firm friends. They're an unlikely pair - Alice is an unassuming mother of two, writing a series of puzzle books for children, while art gallery owner Kat is a wealthy heiress with money to burn, used to getting what she wants.

Alice's husband, Todd, becomes concerned about Kat's influence over Alice and their marriage suffers a further blow when Todd loses his job. When Alice worries how she will pay overdue student fees, Kat is quick to write Alice a cheque for an enormous sum of money. This rouses the suspicion of the police investigating Howard's death. Everyone thought Howard fell from the balcony of his two-story mansion in a drunken stupor but now a witness has come forward saying someone pushed Howard. There are lots of people with a motive to murder Howard - he was a disagreeable alcoholic who Kat insists was having an affair and who could also be violent.

The novel is narrated unreliably by Alice who jumps back and forward in time - between when she met Kat three years earlier and key moments in their friendship, to the present day investigation into Howard's murder. Suspicions are raised when Alice begins to realise Kat hasn’t been honest about her relationship with Howard, her past friendships or her extracurricular activities. There's a noticeable gap in the narrative - the events immediately leading up to Howard's murder are missing - instead jumping to a few days later when Kat has inexplicably stopped responding to Alice's calls and messages and Alice is questioned by the police.

Best Friends Forever has a cast of untrustworthy characters. Even Alice is hiding something from the reader - at face value she appears to be an ordinary woman who loves her family, but we know she is dishonest from the first few pages when she admits to hoping she is convincing when she speaks to the police. Kat's motives are also unclear - she's a deeply unhappy woman trying to conceal her true state of mind with alcohol and affairs with younger men, but we are uncertain how far she is willing to go to change her situation. These two women are intelligent, intriguing and crafty and their relationship makes for compelling reading, particularly the mystery as to how their incredibly close bond suddenly turns into a situation where Alice fears for her life.

No word is wasted and the book is heavy on dialogue, making it a quick and easy read - exactly what you want when you're keen to find out what happens. Fans of B.A. Paris and Ruth Ware will enjoy this fast-paced thriller as the secrets both women have been keeping are finally unravelled in the last few pages. Margot Hunt cleverly drops hints, giving the reader all the information required to figure out what's really going on, and just like the logic puzzles Alice enjoys, the reader will be weighing up evidence and trying to draw a plausible conclusion. Who is a knave and who, if anyone, will be the knight?

Former professor and middle-class mom Alice Campbell and wealthy socialite Kat Grant live in different worlds, but after a chance meeting at the airport, soon become best friends. Things are great between the two women until Kat's husband Howard dies under suspicious circumstances. Soon, Alice begins to wonder if she truly knew Kat at all.

This book is told in the first person from Alice's point of view, both in the present and through flashbacks to the past showing how Alice and Kat met and how their friendship few. Truth, lies, and trust are a main topic in this book - truth, trust, and lies between spouses and between friends and even truth in what we post on social media. The books begins with a quote that everybody lies, and that is certainly the case in this thriller. I guessed some of the twists, but not the final one, even though the author gave a few clues that things were not as they seemed. I really enjoyed the book with all of the twists and turns. The description said it's the author's first psychological thriller, but I hope it isn't her last. I rounded my 4.5 star rating to 5 because the book was compelling from beginning to end.

I received this book from NetGalley, through the courtesy of HQ Digital. The book was provided to me in exchange for an honest review.

What a book and a half! Excellent book. Brilliant story and I loved the main characters. I would highly recommend this book.

Wow, this book was fantastic! I was sucked in from the very first few pages! I loved diving into Alice and Kat’s relationship and trying to figure out what was real and was all a manipulation. I can tell you there is way more than what meets the eyes with this suspenseful read and it will definitely keep you on the edge of your seat! The characters blended perfectly with the plot, making one helluva psychological thriller!

Loved this book, it kept me guessing as to what had happened and why and I enjoyed the journey!! I found it well written and gripping.

I really enjoyed this book. Kat and Alice meet in an airport. Kat is rich, Alice is struggling. Both are married and have issues going on in their marriage. They become friends. End of story right? Wrong!! Kat's husband is killed and Alice is drawn into the investigation. It becomes apparant that there is more to the story. Good book about how one percieves loyalty and manipulation. Excellent read. Loved it from start to finsih. Do not sleep on this book. Thanks to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC of the book in return for my honest review.

How to get a 4* rating on your shitty psychological thriller.

-Create a protagonist who has no personality. Make sure she's a selfish hypocrite (so edgy), a bitch to her husband (to relate to the unhappy housewives) and has wealth-envy (to relate to all the socialists).

-Make sure your manuscript is 75% useless information.

-Make the cops and anyone else in a position of authority or esteem behave in a comically OTT manner as if they're acting in a pantomime or a bad melodrama, so it's obvious to the dumb reader that these are the bad guys.

-Include statements that don't really make sense but sound smart so the reader thinks you're clever. Such as 'I bit the words out,' or 'there was a slight flicker behind his eyes,' or 'his lip was curled, causing him to speak in an unflattering sneer.'

-Describe water as 'cold, clear liquid' so the reader knows what it is.

-Add lots of meaningless commentary on everyday life to show how woke the protagonist is and how much better she is than everyone else who actually cares about that stuff. Portray her as a cool, not-even-trying, can't-be-bothered-anymore wife, to appeal to the self-righteous hippies.

-Document, beat by beat, every single action taken in pouring a glass of wine and drinking it, and repeat variations of said documentation dozens (or more) times throughout the book, in case the reader forgot what drinking a glass of wine actually entails. Use this same formula for other basic actions too. You never know just how stupid your reader might be.

-Explain commonly used terms to the reader, as if they were born yesterday, such as "He hit me so hard, I saw stars. You know, like in cartoons when little stars and birds rotate around a character's head?"

-Include deeply philosophical statements such as Everything looks better from a distance, to clumsily foreshadow the fact that people's lives aren't what they seem and Kat is really a nutter.

-Make ironic statements about people who use social media, who the protagonist has nothing but scorn for, because 'I didn't want to know everyone's emotions the moment they felt them,' and then proceed to tell the reader every inane thought that enters the protagonist's head because her commentary is better than everyone else's.

-Include several people being scared the hell out of and dropping the drink they were conveniently holding, to smash on the ground and spill the contents everywhere. Although this doesn't go anywhere and can be scrapped from the book because it adds nothing to the story, character-building or anything else, it does add a kind of literary jump-scare and everyone knows how clever those are.

-Add a page or two of boring, pointless introspect; commentary on the mundane task your protagonist is doing, or intricate description (or all three) of the room you're in, before the set up of each scene or chapter. Arriving at a scene late and leaving early is silly when you can bulk up your word count with this kind of crap and claim your character's just being insightful.

-Repeatedly interrupt the story to tell the reader exactly how each character takes their drinks; hot and cold.

-Add the same strange quirk to most of your characters when they're annoyed, - lips twisting, because it's easier than thinking of different quirks for each person. Also, make sure every time a character nods, the nod is almost imperceptible, for no reason. And when someone laughs, always mention that it's without humour. Also for no reason.

-Whenever possible, point out the very obvious. And always make sure your prose comes across as extremely condescending. Write whole paragraphs, with backstory to them, explaining modern terms that a few readers might not have heard before. It's always better to stop the flow of the story in its tracks to make sure those few readers are keeping up, rather than just let anyone who sees fit, Google that term, in their own time.

-Make sure when your protagonist is simply recounting a conversation or incident to someone else, she includes all sorts of irrelevant detail, as if she's reading a real-time description of it, rather than realistically only recalling the most important elements.

-Make sure your protagonist (who you're trying to convince the reader is innocent of murder) implicates herself in the crime by only becoming incredulous to being arrested, AFTER she finds out what little evidence they have against her, and not to the act of being arrested itself.

-Say a scene starts with a knock at the door. Don't just start the scene with a knock at the door, you amateur. Give the reader a taste of your protagonist's fantastically fascinating physical gripes that don't have any impact on the story first. Also, make sure to include a list of all your protagonist's wandering thoughts wherever you fancy.
E.g My doorbell rang, and I started. I'd lost track of the fact that I was sitting at my desk, staring into space. I closed my laptop, stood and arched my back to alleviate the tightness caused by hunching over my computer for so long. I headed to the front door, expecting to find a Girl Scout hawking Thin Mints or a neighbor asking me to sign a petition against the pollution of our local waterways. But as it turned out, it was neither. - Nailed it.

-Instead of adding any semblance of a plot to your book, just talk extensively about the day to day life of the protagonist and all of her bitter, scathing opinions on people who seem to have better lives than her.

-Make a cliffhanger out of the introduction of the protagonist's mother, that promises conflict and escalation of the plot, and then don't follow up on that promise at all.

-Make sure at least five of your characters add nothing to the story. They could be a white-bearded potter, a sexy bartender named Hudson, a tattooed man flicking his tongue at the protagonist to remind the reader she's sexy, a lighthouse tour leader named Cassie, some random prison-bitch named Kayla and her girlfriend, Kat's steely-faced mother or any number of relatives never seen or heard from again after introduction. Readers like to waste their time cataloguing character names and relationships, only to never need to recall them again.

-Start every scene with unnecessary, overwrought clumps of description. Describe every single room the protagonist enters down to the shade of the various wall paints used and the country the exquisite marble was possibly sourced from, because if there's anything that propels the plot forward, it's that.

-Let every woman in the book be the most attractive person the protagonist has ever seen, to show that she's not jealous and to appeal to the feminists

-Constantly describe things the same way, such as the detective's straight, gleaming white teeth, every time he smiles, when, in lesser books, they'd only be described once or not at all.

-Describe the clothing, intricate facial features and exact body type of every person the protagonist meets. Don't worry about limiting such detail to just the main characters. Tell the readers everything possible about all the extended cast too, even unnamed people. Thriller readers LOVE that.

-Emphasise the protagonist's emotional devastation at the death of her daughter, whenever you get the chance, and include episodes of empathy towards other characters, then add a twist at the end that completely contradicts her personality and implies the protagonist is the real sociopath. Who needs logic?

-Make the protagonist a logician to highlight her lack of empathy (even though she shows empathy) and her skill at solving problems, and then when there's a tiny glacial-paced movement in the plot, dumb her down so the incredibly stupid reader can figure out what's going on alongside her, and then, make sure to spell it out several times afterwards, in case they missed it.
E.g For a moment I felt like I couldn't breathe. They knew Kat had loaned us that money. A loan we hadn't paid back. But, wait... how did they know? And why was it even relevant? - And - Kat wanted Howard dead. And Kat gave me twenty thousand dollars. I was beginning to understand why they had arrested me.

-Remember to keep the plot simple so laymen can follow. So simple, in fact, that it barely needs to exist. Surreptitiously explain why your plot is so thin via dialogue from one of your secondary characters.
E.g Grace took off her glasses and pressed her fingers to her temples.
"Is that information overload?"
Grace smiled. "No, but the reality of my job-and that of any other defense attorney and author-is that we like simple narratives. They're easier to sell to juries and dumb shit readers."

-At your whim, include flippant, random anecdotes about child abuse. E.g Ebbie once told me, in far too much detail, about the first time she'd had sex with a man after divorcing my father. I was ten at the time.

-Write by the notion that 'said is dead.' Who needs to tighten the prose and cause as little distraction to the reader as possible by putting 'said' after most dialogue when you can emphasise an already obvious question by putting 'she asked' after it, along with 'she insisted' after the words 'just tell me,' etc etc?

-Intersperse dialogue with detailed actions to ramp up the word count. E.g "I know you're probably wondering why you stayed home from school today," I began, once I'd chewed and swallowed a bite of veggie pizza.

-Clumsily foreshadow one of the only plotpoints in the book (Kat using and then ghosting Alice), by almost the exact same thing happening to someone else beforehand.

-Describe the secret behind the success of children's logic books in the publishing industry and go into detail about how you know this because if there's anything a reader loves in a thriller, it's one pointless, boring tangent after another.

-Add in the detailed plots of the children's stories your protagonist is writing even though they have no relevance to the plot and only serve to reiterate an already over-stated fact about main your character's personality.

-Constantly elaborate on the anxiety of a child of the protagonist and the effect it has on her, even though that anxiety goes nowhere and the children are barely even secondary characters. Cut them out of the book and the book would be the same, except with less filler. But filler ups word count so keep that shit in. Also appeals to mothers.

-Include poems and inspirational quotes to appeal to the Instagrammers. It also ups word count without having to add plot.

-Add in long, petty arguments between the protagonist and her mother that don't lead anywhere or impact the plot. Gotta get those words in.

-Make sure the first plot development after the inciting incident, doesn't happen until after the 70% mark. Structure schmucture. Pacing schmacing.

-Make it blatantly obvious that the protagonist is guilty, right from the start, by her never outright denying involvement in the murder, and then try to use her guilt as a plot twist at the end, to make up for the completely underwhelming and boring climax.

-Very importantly, ensure that your protagonist, after being let off the hook for a murder she obviously committed, risks incriminating herself by telling the entire detailed story of the murder to the one person who wants her locked up and could easily be using a recording device, just to fulfil the cliched, hilariously overdetailed and illogical "tell you everything" monologue at the end and patronise the reader even more.

-Lastly, but most importantly of all:
Label it a psychological thriller - the literary equivalent of modern art, so if anyone doesn't like your book, you can say they just didn't understand it.

Then, sit back and watch the 5* reviews roll in. KA-CHING!

Apologies to the publisher but my patience wanes every time I waste days of my life reading fiction of this poor quality. Thank you for sending me a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Alice and Kat meet on a flight, they have an instant connection and become instant best friends.......Then Kat's husband ends up dead and Kat is missing!! Now the police is asking Alice a whole lot of questions..
Ok so those above sentences took me like an hour to write, I want to give you a little about the book but don't want to give anything away. I know that I love a book that totally surprises me and that is what Margot does in Best Friends Forever!