The Secretary by Renée Knight was an excellent thriller.
Christine starts working as a secretary for Mina who is running her family business with her father. Mina becomes more demanding on Christine's time and this takes its toll on her family life as she is working longer hours and weekends and has to attend to Mina's every whim. Her job becomes the main focus and this has unfortunate consequences.
I really enjoyed this book it was a real page turner.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this book, it was a slow-burn read rather than fast-paced, with a decent twist. I would recommend it.

I can describe this book as a really chatty mystery. It's told from one person's perspective, which is 'The Secretary', and whole book is her telling the events that lead to the end of this book.

Christine is a secretary and starts to work for Mina, in her own family business. Mina is one of those very ambitious women, who thinks the world should revolve around her. Very manipulative, cold-hearted and she can do anything to reach what she wants.
Christine is happily married with a daughter. She becomes the personal assistant of Mina, and this changes her life in years.
The book opens with Christine, who moved to a different location, and she starts to tell the story from the beginning. We don't know why she's telling, what she's going to do as a result of these. There lies the mystery.
The rest of the book, till the very end is kind of a diary of Christine telling herself how their relationship with Mina progressed and how she became attached to her even a partner in crime.
In my opinion this part was very long, very dialogue based. I had to skim read some parts. That's why I would recommend you this book if only you like books that are in diary style, where events progress very slowly.
I gave this book 3 stars for 2 main reasons:
1. It was too long for what it was definitely.
2. I really don't think the writer developed the characters enough for us to believe and understand why they are who they are. You don't become a 'Mina' type out of the blue. Or even more so, what was Christine's motivation when she had a perfectly normal childhood and a happy current marriage. It didn't make sense and this was lacking.
Other than that, I think the writer made a very good research. The writing was decent. But, I wish it was better paced, and more thrilling.
Thanks a lot to the publisher and NetGalley for this complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.

I loved Knight's Disclaimer but this book feels less slick. It's a slow-burn and it's not always clear why characters do the things they do: it's hard to believe, for example, that Christine is so in thrall to her job that she can let her family fall apart. I also wasn't clear as to why they're all on trial: Mina's business practices are unethical to an extreme but is she doing anything illegal?

The final section ramps up the crazy factor! Quite a lot of suspension of disbelief needed for this one...