Thank you so much for this ARC!

This book started out strong and I was enjoying seeing how the plot played out. However, I was very disappointed in the ending. Too rushed and far fetched.

I finished this ‘psychological thriller’ THE COUPLE by SARAH MITCHELL... and I have to say I’m really not impressed😔 When the book was described as the perfect read for fans of “The Wife Between Us” and “The Woman in the Window” I was so pumped because these were both GREAT reads. But I feel like I was completely misled...the story was not anything like both of those books...
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It is described as a psychological thriller, where main character lawyer Claire and hotel entrepreneur Angus are engaged. Happy and successful. But when Claire meets Mark, the man selling them their new house he looks eerily familiar. Exactly like the man she loved five years ago, the man she couldn’t bear to lose. Claire becomes increasingly close to Mark crossing lines she never thought she would cross and Angus’ behavior becomes increasingly suspicious. Soon Claire doesn’t know whether she can trust mark, or Angus or herself!
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The book started off good and I was definitely intrigued but the more it went on the more I was thinking ‘WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS STORY? WHAT IS CLAIRE’s GOAL? WHAT DOES SHE WANT?’ I had no idea where it was going! It just seemed to be following her everyday life until a twist is thrown at you at the end which confused me like crazy!! Much of the dialogue wasn’t believeable and the second half of the book had an unnecessary amount of similes which I found really off putting! (some that didn’t even make sense 🤷🏼‍♀️) I was so sad because the storyline sounded like it had so much potential and so much more tension could have been created throughout the book leading up to that twist at the end...but I was definitely disappointed with this read. ⭐️⭐️’s for me .
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I completely understand how much work and effort goes into writing a story and how bloody DIFFICULT it is so the Author definitely did an amazing job at creating unique character’s and coming up with a good intriguing storyline... I just would have loved to have had more tension created throughout! .
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I received an advanced copy of this book through @netgalley in return for my honest review :) Thank you to Netgalley and the @bookouture the publishers and the Author Sarah Mitchell!

The Couple by Sarah Mitchell was not the book that I was expecting at all. The story was slow to begin with and then rushed at the end. I found it to be a bit far fetched and full of really horrible characters. There was not one that I liked in the entire book. It was at times confusing and it took me longer that usual to read as I just could not get into it as much as I would have liked.

Claire and Angus are engaged to be married and are buying their first home together. They buy a house from Mark, who reminds Claire of her ex boyfriend Daniel. Mark becomes a big part of Sarahs life and she starts to make some really stupid decisions. Her relationship with Angus is strained at the best of times and after they move in it gets worse. She starts to discover things about his life that don't marry up to what she has been told. The ending was good but it felt rushed after the start of the book dragged out.

Thanks to Bookouture and Netgalley for my advanced copy of this book. All opinions are my own and are in no way biased.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for the opportunity to read The Couple by Sarah Mitchell and provide my review.

This book took me a little while to get in to, however it was not due to the writing style of the author, more that I was distracted by family life. I got to about half way before I really delved into reading it in chunks and boy did I not look back after that. I really enjoyed the author's writing style, it was easy to read and so descriptive. However, the secret stayed until the very end for me. I kept wondering why Claire was the way she was and could not work out what had occurred previously with Daniel, I just felt sorry for her as there was not enough information to make a different judgement. Angus just did not seem like the right person for her and I was not sure about their relationship and planning marriage, one minute it was a loving one, to the next time he was suspicious of her. Then along comes Mark! After the initial attraction that relationship was a little strange and I could not see why Claire was so hooked by him when he himself was a very shady character. Then along comes Agatha, the stalker who takes photos of people she likes without their knowledge. She was a strange character too, but with all the characters they just fit with each other. I am sounding very cryptic however I don't want to give away the ending as it was not what I expected. A sign of a great book when the author keeps you guessing until the very end. It was certainly not what I was thinking!

I would definitely read more of Sarah Mitchells books and I hope that there is a sequel to The Couple to further explore the new relationship hinted with Jamie, Agatha and of course Claire.

While the book was good I got distracted in the story instead of immersed.

The characters were well designed and see a lot of potential.

Claire is getting married to Angus, but when they buy their new home together from a man called Mark, Claire is transported back to the past remembering an old boyfriend Daniel. The Couple sees Claire get tangled up in lust, lies and love as we go back and forwards in time learning about her life.
There is more to Mark than meets the eye but will Claire work it out, or will Angus reveal his true self first? I enjoyed the book but felt it a little slow and complex during the first half of the book.

Thank you to Sarah Mitchell and Bookouture for this ARC.

I wanted to like this book, I really did. The story was long and at times boring, and the twist ending was just meh. Yes, the twists were unexpected, but it felt like a whole lot of build up for a small whimper.

This will not deter me from reading any future books by Sarah Mitchell. Some readers might love this book, but it just wasn't for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for an advanced read in exchange for this review.

The blurb and the title were what intrigued me - sadly, the read did not live up to what they promised.

The characters are all unlikeable - which doesn't necessarily make the book bad. However, their personas are flat and thus their actions puzzling and not at all believable, the plot is confusing and has so many gaping holes several armies could cheerfully march through them, and the story follows many unnecessary and meandering paths along the way to an unsubtle twist at the end. Sorry, but I would not recommend.

Wow! What can I say? Sarah Mitchell has a way of making you feel sorry for the main character, Claire, and also wondering why she is making the decisions she is making. Keeps you enthralled in the story. Keeps you wanting to see what happens. Thank you for letting me read this in return for my honest review.

The Couple is such a fast-paced read. I tore through it; you know a book is good when you read more than 60% in a day; it literally ate up my weekend. There is a lot going on in this book, but it makes for such a gripping read, and the tension simmers from the first page to the last.

Claire works as an immigration lawyer for the Home Office, and her job is to defend their cases. At the beginning of the book, she and her fiancé, Angus are celebrating their engagement; everything should be perfect and happy, but something doesn’t appear right in their relationship. Claire already feels on tenterhooks before her stepfather mistakes Angus for her previous partner, Daniel in his speech. From this point on I knew that this was going to be a novel I was going to enjoy as Sarah Mitchell was starting to create a real sense of unease and I had to know how everything was going to unfold.

Claire’s job as an immigration lawyer was fascinating, and you get to see what must go on behind the scenes in some of these cases, and I felt that this was an area which had researched well; I could sense the tension there was in the courtroom as we waited for the verdict to be given to the judge. Claire is such a perplexing character. I could sense that something had happened in her past with her previous boyfriend, Daniel and I wanted to find out what it was that had happened between them. We do visit back to this time as Sarah takes us back five years earlier.

Sarah ratchets up the tension as we get to understand more disturbing truths and what is really going on behind the scenes and there was a final twist that left my head in a spin. I had to think about it for a while, I must admit, but once I did, I thought it was done very well, and there was a very satisfactory ending.

This is the first book by Sarah Mitchell which I’ve read, and I’m very eager to read her next one. This book will keep you gripped from the first page and enthralled in the lives of her characters.

So I had never read a book by Sarah Mitchell beforehand, and I was not to be disappointed! Read in under 48hrs (working days none the less) I went back to my kindle to continue reading at whatever chance I could get. "The Couple" was everything I want in a Physcological Thriller. The storyline easy to be hooked on and had me wondering how the storyline would possibly play out! This is well written, the characters are likeable and nothing is given away to early as to what possible tragic tale will unfold! I will now go on to read the authors previous book "Love Letters" and look forward to reading more thrillers by this author! Would highly recommend this book!

The Couple is a different kind of thriller that I will be thinking of for quite a while afterwards.
The story is based around Claire she is a lawyer specialising in immigration, we meet her as she has just become engaged to Angus and are looking at the perfect house to buy. The seller of the house, Mark, reminds Claire of Daniel her boyfriend she had at university. This is a very different read and I’m not going to go into it and spoil it as I do think you are best knowing very little. The chapters are interspersed with years earlier in the timeline when Claire was at university, so you are getting two tales for the price of one almost. Chapter 24 I think it was did really confuse me as I thought the character I was following was Claire but in that one chapter I didn’t know who I was meant to be, was this a mistake or was it intentional? All I do know is it left me a little confused.
An enjoyable thriller that had some decent twists and a satisfying ending.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Bookouture for this ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an arc copy of The Couple in exchange for an honest review.

This book was a first of this author's that I have read. It started off promising and held my interest but the end was a bit of a let down. Claire, the main character in the book, came across as very gullible and truly unbelievable that an educated person would be so easily duped. The three male figures in the book, Angus, Mark, and Daniel all were very unlikable characters. The back story with Daniel was confusing to me as I still after re-reading the last chapters a few times do not know what happened and whether Claire was his ex-girlfriend who was obsessed with him or current girlfriend at the time. I really can't say I would recommend this book as it left me feeling like I spent all the time reading it to finish very unsatisfied and confused.

I enjoyed reading this book. It had a good story to it. I liked the variety of characters in it. It is my first book read by this author. I hope to read more books by this author.

The Couple by Sarah Mitchell is a thriller about Claire who is newly engaged to Angus, who she've just met for a few months. Strange things start happening after they purchased a house from Mark, a man who looks just like Daniel, Claire's ex-boyfriend. Claire can't seem to stay away from him, and neither could Mark, it seems. Soon Claire is caught up in a situation she finds hard to get herself out of.

The story alternates between the present and past- five years ago with Daniel. I can tell why some might market this to The Wife Between Us fans, as the way the story is told is similar in aspects. Overall, I don't think there's much of a shocker/plot twist in this book. The main character, Claire, is hard to comprehend, and is not well-developed. I find her very unlikeable as her actions seem unrealistic and stupid. I find myself scratching my head in confusion and frustration throughout this book because of her. Mark is another character who I do not understand as well.

Overall, if I look past those points, the book is decent and worth a read.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and publisher for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest, unbiased review.

The Couple looked very much like your standard domestic psychological thriller. (Standard issue domestic thriller title: check. Cover featuring young woman in brightly coloured coat looking over her shoulder: check.) So much so, in fact, that I wasn’t actually sure if I could be bothered to read it. However, it wasn’t quite what those signifiers had led me to expect. In fact it was quite an odd read altogether.

Narrator Claire is newly engaged to Angus after a whirlwind romance but clearly still affected by unspecified events involving previous boyfriend Daniel. Claire works for the Home Office, representing the government in appeals against immigration decisions. Angus has pots of money apparently from running hotels, and urges Claire into buying a house from a bloke called Mark, who seems a bit over familiar in more ways than one. From that point on, things escalate quickly...

It’s definitely more thriller than domestic and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing (that market is pretty saturated by now). I enjoyed reading it - it was a fast, easy read - and felt it was well written with an original and timely premise. The details of Claire’s work at the Home Office are interesting and have a ring of authenticity. None of the main characters are very nice, though Claire does have her redeeming qualities and as a narrator is quite interesting, though some of her decisions and choices seem bizarre.

The “twist” involving the past relationship with Daniel was clearly signposted (during flashbacks to “five years earlier”) and I would have been very surprised if it hadn’t occurred.

The title is utterly meaningless and seems to have been chosen purely to tap into the current domestic thriller market. (It probably doesn’t help that I hated the inexplicably successful The Couple Next Door, which this title is obviously reminiscent of.) Yes, there’s a couple in The Couple (in the present and in the past). But it could just as easily have been called The Vendor, The Fiancé, The Ex-Boyfriend or pretty much anything else.

All in all though an enjoyable read and certainly wouldn’t put me off reading anything else by this author. Three and a half stars rounded up to 4.

This is an enjoyable thriller with a solid storyline that kept me reading. I did find at times the plot to be sort of extreme...

I had a hard time finding myself liking the any of the characters.
I was able to guess a few times what was going to happen, but the end was a complete surprise.

Absolutely riveting! Sarah Mitchell is a new author to me and I am now a fan.

It was very slow to start but it does get good.

I will say whatever you think you know going into this is wrong. The author does a good job at catching the reader off guard.

I enjoyed this book took a long to me getting to the real reason for the story but once it got going it got really exciting. Angus and Claire are engaged, he is a very successful business man owning boutique hotels, Claire works for immigration finding if people have legal reasons to stay in the country.
But all is not what it seems, and Angus’s hotels are hiding a seedy side of the hotels, as Claire finds out she is being blackmailed by a partner in the business with Angus.
It will be difficult to write too much as it really could give the outcome away but read this book it’s really good,

Loved this book. It had lots of twists and turns, and didn't solve every problem presented. But it was a very satisfying read for those of us who love psychological thrillers. Want to read more from this author. She managed to keep the main character somewhat of an enigma, which left me wanting to know more.