2 Stars

I had so much hope for this book but it was pretty terrible. Amelie was an insufferable woman having an affair with unremarkable Ben. The whole book is her thoughts on this stupid affair. It was very slow to start off and the just when you think it could get good. Poof! Nothing freaking happens. What a let down. It promotes as a psycho-thriller but it is nothing of the sort.

Unflinching look at infidelity and it’s effect on two women. Story of Amelie who is a divorced author who is obsessed with a married man. Coincidentally, Amelies husband cheated on her and it lead to their divorce. As the obsession gets stronger so does the thoughts Amelie has of killing her lovers wife. I found Amelie a totally unlikeable character since she was putting another through the pain she had been through. Thought provoking novel.

J.P. Smith’s beautifully written latest is a blend of romantic obsession and psychological suspense that builds to an emotionally horrifying conclusion. Amelie is 40, beautiful, and a NY Times bestselling novelist. She is also lonely and has spent two years in an affair with Ben, who has no intention of leaving his wife, Janet, and their two children. They all live in a small town. Ben and Amelie’s teen daughters are school friends. Amelie runs into Ben and Janet in public places and must hide her feelings, a humiliating situation for an independent woman whom many men find attractive. She obsesses about what her life with Ben would be like if Janet were out of the way — if she were dead. Amelie buys a little blue pistol and begins carrying it in her purse, with no clear plan of action. , She’s startled when her lover’s wife makes a friendly overture, inviting her to lunch, and deeply worried when Janet asks for her advice on how to deal with a cheating husband. Does Janet know Amelie is the other woman? Does she have her own plan for getting rid of the competition? As Amelie, Janet, and Ben dance around their situation, suspense builds to a shocking final scene that few readers will see coming.

This was not my cup of tea. The editing is choppy, the writing is good bu the plot did not do it for me. I could not relate to the plot or the characters much

Bad decisions = not a thrilling story. Sometimes it adds excitement but I have to care about the characters. They were a little flat for me.

Fans of works by Liv Constantine and Sandie Jones will love this next work by J.P. Smith, author of the suspense/mystery thriller "The Drowning".

Author Amelie Ferrar is having an affair. After 2 years, the relationship seems to have become stagnent - until it looks like the wife, Janet, has found out.

What happens next is a subtle work of psychological mind games that will have you wondering whether Amelie, in her furvor to protect the affair and bring it into the open and to eventual marriage, is really seeing what she is seeing - or if her mind has fractured leading her to a more sinister end game that you won't see coming.

"The Drowning" is one of my favorite books and I could not wait to read this one. A stand-alone, "If She Were Dead" is a different kind of slow-burn that as the chapters go on and the parts of the novel pass, the story itself seems to get more and more frantic on purpose to show Amelie's own interior mind.

It was a lot of fun (scary story, but fun for the ride). Perfectly perfect for a rainy day read - with the lights on.

Thank you to Sourcebooks and NetGalley for early access to this title.

Seriously Amelie? Her husband cheated on her and now she's obsessed with another woman's husband. Does Ben's wife know? I found it hard to be sympathetic to her even as I read through her wild stream of consciousness. Not conscience btw. I wanted to like this but couldn't get past the fact that Amelie was doing to another woman what was done to her or that Ben is doing to his wife what Amelie's husband did. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Others might like this more than I did- it's twisty enough to keep you engaged.

This book was a difficult to read. The characters were not interesting and story plot was weak. It dragged on for most of the story which made it hard to get through. There was a lot to work with but there was something missing to keep me interested towards the end. Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

One helluva good book!! I'm glad I was chosen to read this book! I loved how fast the story went! I didn't want to see it end to be honest! Definitely recommend this book!

Not a bad read overall.
Writing style was ok . Sadly I wasn’t blown away by it
Thank you to both NetGalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my review

I was excited for this book and thought there would be quite a few twists and turns, but I was pretty disappointed. A woman is having and affair with a married man and we are privy to ALL her thoughts and actions surrounding it. That was it, that was the book......
I kept waiting and waiting for something to happen, and it never did.
I am not sure how this was billed as any type of mystery or thriller. Because it is was far removed from that. I hate not being able to recommend a book I was given as an ARC but, yeah here we are.

I have mixed feelings about this book and I don't really know how to rate it. I found some parts very good, and in some others—probably the majority of id—nothing happened. It's very slow burning, and the conclusion is…how to say?…not shocking per se but either didn't make sense or there's something I missed about the main character that could have explained it.
Amelie is a famous novelist. In love with a married man, she's been her lover for the last two weeks. She met him at their children’s school after recently divorcing her husband who was having an affair with a younger woman. There's nothing really new in the concept, except this: as a novelist Amelie make scenarios of what-ifs and that give readers some great parts where reality and fiction blend into one another. Too bad there weren't more of these moments.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the advance galley in exchange for an honest review.

No one in this book was likeable. Apart from the wife maybe. It's told from the pov of the other woman and her obsession. The plot twist confused me though and left me speechless. A must read.

I have very mixed feeling on If She Were Dead by JP Smith. I really don’t know where to start. It took a while to get into this book and it felt very slow and drawn out for most of it. There was not a single character that I liked, all of them getting on my nerves and needing a serious shaking! And there there was the ending.. what was that all about? I am still not really sure how I feel about it at all.

Amelie is a divorced writer having an affair with a married man., after her own husband left her after an affair. The man she is with Ben is really not worth her time or feelings. She is obsessed with him and struggles to separate fact from fiction. She fantasises about what it would be like I did his wife were no longer around. The book is basically their affair and the thoughts going on in her head.

Thanks to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for my advanced copy of this book. All opinions are my own and are in no way biased

A good domestic noir took a long time to get into the story but once I did it was fantastic and well written xx

So, she having an affair with a married man, unsure if his wife knows or cares. Think you’ve read this one before? Oh no, you haven’t. The writing style and prose is excellent and the story is presumably deliberately confusing. Yes, it can qualify as a domestic noir, but it’s really an exploration of our romantic psyches and why and how we attach or detach ourselves. I didn’t think I was going to enjoy this one in the beginning but it pulled me in and I was so glad.

I'm not really sure how to feel about this one. I'm still slightly confused about the ending and final plot twist? The plot was kind of repetitive and definitely a slow burn. It felt like nothing really happened until the last quarter or so of the book, and then I just fell confused. Most of the plot consisted of Amelie's ramblings and complaining about her obsession for a man that wasn't worthy of her devotion. Three stars. Quick read but lacked the kind of depth I'm used to reading.

This book is a gripping and complex read. We get the feeling that Amelie is standing at a precipice and is about to fall. We are privy to her innermost thoughts and her outward actions. An affair with a married man is not all she has envisioned, and now when she wants more, things aren’t going quite the way she has hoped. Ever so slowly she gets closer and closer to the edge, will she be saved before she falls OR will she take one step too many?? While this was an engrossing cat and mouse story that had me hooked quite early and kept me on edge until the end, I do wish it would have ended a couple pages earlier, the final twist was a bit overplayed.

Well... ladies and gents this cover is everything!!

I had such high hopes for this book but unfortunately I'm not going to sugar coat anything about this review. This book was pretty bad. It's basically about a woman that's having an affair with a married man... and her thoughts during the entire affair. Let me TELL you.. nothing was happening here my god!!

Around 75 percent it picked up a tad bit... and my goodness I was thinking wow something is about to happen. Nope it just sort of was complete mess again after that. Yikes this was just a hot mess in all and I can't recommend this.

2 stars for me on this one.

Thank you so much to Poisoned Pen Press for the arc in exchange for an honest review.

“She knew it all too well. Sometimes Amelie wished she’d been born without an imagination; she found that it only led to grief and nightmare, as though by simply dreaming up things she allowed them a kind of life apart from her, like some monster in a film, growling and roaming the countryside, throwing innocent children to drown in the lily pond.”*

Writer Amelie daydreams about how great her life will be once her lover divorces his wife and marries her. But while he is always ready for a romp, Ben doesn’t seem interested in an exclusive relationship with Amelie. Soon she’s consumed with thoughts of eliminating the competition for Ben’s affections.

Amelie is a well constructed protagonist. Her daydreams are nicely linked to her imagination, which makes her books bestsellers. Ben’s hot/cold treatment of her fuels her obsessions making her long for a time when she can have him all to herself. His actions, such as accompanying his wife to one of Amelie’s book signing events is thoughtless, if not out and out cruel.

This book contains some beautiful passages, but being deep inside Amelie’s head for the duration of the novel is a bit taxing. The story unfolds slowly with plenty of Amelie’s daydreams taking primary real estate, giving the book a literary bent. Several twists, some constructed with the barest spiderweb silk of foreshadowing, and the ending are sure to be the topic of many a book club discussion.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Thanks to the NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, for providing an Advance Reader Copy.

*Please note that my review is based on uncorrected text.