I was so excited for this book when I seen the ARC copy, However, I have tried to read this book 3 times. I finally DNF it at 30%.

Oh my goodness gracious, y’all. This book was way better than I anticipated. Y’all. Bookstagram is sleeping on this one! Too Good to be True ended up being one of my favorites I’ve read so far this year. It was such a fun and quick story!

What I Loved: Y’all know how much I love a good romance and while some of the rom coms I’ve been picking up lately are a miss, the mystery/thrillers are making up for it! This one had the perfect blend of romance and mystery. I was dying to figure out what happened in Heather’s perspective and how the Burke I was falling in love with connected to the different versions of him I read on the pages. I guessed one twist early on, but was still surprised by many others. The ending was perfection!

What I Didn’t Love: not much. It would have been fun to see an extended timeline in an epilogue, but the fact that we didn’t in no way impacted the book. I loved pretty much everything about this one.

I really struggled to put this one down and get back to work each time I had to stop reading. I finished it in 2 days in which I had a ton of work I was doing. It was that good. Highly highly recommend this one!

Thank you netgalley and publisher for this arc.

I was going through a reading slump where nothing was sticking so I gave this book a try and couldn’t put it down. From the beginning I was hooked and invested in the story. It took a bit for me to remember who goes where since the story is told from 3 POVs and at different timelines but I felt it flowed very well considering. I enjoyed the book, characters, and storyline and will definitely read more by this author.

Too Good to Be True by Carola Lovering

So I love to go in blind for thrillers because that's truly where I get the "thrill" part that comes into play. This book was no exception.

I love books that have 3 POVs. I appreciated how each character's part flowed at a fast pace. There were some areas where that slowed down but it didn't turn me off to the story I was reading. I called some of what was revealed, but that twist!! So good.

Thank you Netgalley and publisher for this eARC.

One live story, two marriages, three versions of the truth. Wild. Absolutely wild! Crazy good book! Told from three POV’s. This one did not disappoint.

Have you ever driven in the mountains? This book is just like that, with all the twists and turns! It is so very interesting and the characters are just so life like and so real. It is a hard book to put down so don't start it until you have lots of time to read!

This was a good, fast read! It drew me in and I love a good twist! It was Well written and engaging. This was my first experience with this author but it definitely kept my interest.

I'm seriously her biggest fan, and will read whatever she writes! Her books just keep getting better and better. The details, the characters, the plot twists, all of it. Just incredible.

I wanted to be in love with TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, but unfortunately, this one wasn't for me. Having started and stoped reading several times, I decided to just not finish this one.

Reviewer Note: During 2020 and the beginning of 2021, I found it difficult to get into many books. I don't know if it was my headspace from the pandemic, but there were a number of books I had to set aside.

Title: Too Good to be True
Author: Carola Lovering
Release Date: March 2nd, 2021
Page Count: 343
Start Date: December 9th, 2021
Finish Date: December 14th, 2021

Review:

Story: This story didn't go where I was expecting it to go at all. I'm sure that is exactly what the author intended. I wasn't expecting to get as invested into the story as I was. It's intense and absolutely gripping. I also love the OCD representation. It's not glamorized or glorified. The character goes through so much because of having OCD that developed after her mother died.
Characters: This story is told in three points of view. We have Skye who has been struggling with OCD since her mother passed away. She's honestly my favorite character of the whole book. I just relate to her so much. Then we have Burke. He's Skye's fiance, but he's got a secret. He's leading a double life. The third point of view is Heather. The wife. It shows her in the past.
Critiques: None
Narration: I loved all three narrators. I was familiar with one already. I absolutely love her. She's one of my favorites.
Final Thoughts: It's been a while since I read this book, but it has really stuck with me. I didn't think that it would be such an impacting story. I was wrong. This book will keep you guessing until the absolute end. It's worth every page.

This was an okay read for me. I found a good bit of the twists to be easily predictable, but was surprised that there was some I didn’t see coming. I found all of the characters extremely hard to like and didn’t really connect with any of them. Overall I’d give this one 3.5 stars.

I was so frustrated with this book. It started out really interesting, and the book WAS interesting, but I found the writing to be really odd. Most of the chapters end abruptly at unnatural stopping points and it made the flow of the book virtually nonexistent.

I liked the story itself, and it's something I've thought about often since I finished the book. I really loved that the MC is neurodiverse, and from my knowledge, a lot of her actions felt well-aligned with an actual OCD diagnosis. But I can't figure out if I liked or disliked the book? Was I satisfied with the ending or incredibly frustrated? Maybe both.

This is definitely one of those books where I can say "this was good" or "this was bad." So it's one you'd have to read to experience yourself. The plot was really interesting though!

I wanted to read this book as soon as I saw it compared to Lisa Jewell's book "The Wife Between Us". I enjoyed this thriller as much as I enjoyed Lisa's. It was a good comparison.
It was a unique writing style with the three versions of the truth. I did not see the big reveal coming.
I highly recommend this book to any reader that enjoys psychological thrillers.
I received the galley from NetGalley.

Very entertaining. There are three POV, each character has a view of the others, and this made for a more complex story. Very good, though. Pick up this one!

What a read! I cannot wait to read more by Carola Lovering. This was a great slow burn read in which I figured out part of the twist but still was so entertained in finding out what was about to happen. I listened to this one on audio and loved the cast. I feel like there were parts that were a little too detailed and I didn't love the ending (but only because I don't think it is what I would have done in that situation!) .

Highly recommend this one and shout out to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read this one in exchange for my honest opinion!

Skye is thrilled to finally be engaged after years of hookups & failed relationships to her boyfriend Burke, even if it’s just after 9 months of dating. Burke is older than Skye, so the quick engagement doesn’t raise *too* many red flags for her, but oh no honey, it should. Skye has battled intense OCD since the death of her mother when she was 12, and that has really put a hindrance on her relationships. Because Burke loves her and embraces her fully, OCD and all, she goes full speed ahead into a relationship that is unfortunately, too good to be true. This is told from the perspective of 3 different characters over a super interesting timeline, which when it all comes together is mind blowing.

This book kept me hooked from the very beginning, and it’s partially because of the masterful way Carola Lovering writes about toxic and unhealthy relationships. WHEW! Sometimes it is A LOT, but she truly grasps the struggle of loving someone even when you know they’re bad for you, and doing something even when you know it’s the wrong thing. 3.5, nearing 4 stars for this one! The ending, though I understood it and the thought behind it, was slightly unsatisfying. But wow still loved it as a whole!

Great book. Highly recommend and will most defiantly read more by this author and suggest to others!

Too Good To Be True was surprising and compelling. It’s rare that I can relate to so many of the characters in a novel, especially when pitted against each other, but Carola Lovering did such an incredible job of showing the many facets of each character. True to human nature, Lovering depicted each person’s strengths, weaknesses, desires and flaws in a way that was impossible not to connect to and understand.

Told through opposing viewpoints from Skye Starling, a rich girl with anxiety struggling to fall in love and find happiness, and Heather Price, a poor teen determined to get out of her small town and make a better life for herself. Interspersed throughout the chapters are also diary excerpts from a third perspective, presumably Burke’s who has loved Heather since they were teenagers and is now conning Skye into loving him.

While I won’t get too into the love triangle because I never want to give too much away, I will say that, for me, Burke was the character who evolved the most. I was ready to hate him and blame him for so many of the problems, but in a lot of ways he just made me sad. I feel bad for that teen who just wanted to be loved by the girl of his dreams and who wanted to protect and help her in the face of so much tragedy. I think Burke took on too much responsibility for Heather and ended up suffocated by it.

There was a ton of foreshadowing from the very beginning to give the reader a glimpse of what was coming, so it wasn’t a particularly twisted thriller, but that didn’t take away from how engaging it was. On the contrary, it made me read the story faster because I wanted to find out what happened and see how much of what I anticipated and guessed and was accurate!

I actually read this novel back in February, but as a sign of a great book, I just couldn’t sit down to review it right away because I was still processing all of my feelings and emotions. Months later, parts of this story have stayed with me and still haunt me a little. I never include spoilers, so comment below if you’re still thinking about Gus or any other aspects of this novel!

Thank you to St Martin's Press and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I actually read this book a bit ago and when I sat down to write the review, I couldn't remember any details of the book until I reread the synopsis. In saying that, once I had refreshed my mind on the events of the book, I had enjoyed the storyline. The characters were the love to hate kind, at times I empathized with them and at others I was cursing their stupidity, vindicatory actions and their greed.
Although I didn't find this to be a really good read, it was very enjoyable with enough twists to keep my interest.

Too Good to Be True was an intriguing mystery full of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the very end.

Skye Starling has finally found the man she's ready to spend the rest of her life with and is ecstatic when he proposes. To the world, Skye seems to have it all; she's smart, beautiful, has the perfect guy, and she's from a well-off family. But hidden from the world is the fact she's living with severe OCD. With her chance at the fairytale, Skye throws herself into planning her wedding. But what Skye doesn't know is that Burke Michaels isn't who he claims to be. That's he's already married and is using Skye for his own end.

Too Good to Be True is told in three alternating points of view; Skye's, Burke's, and Heather's (Burke's wife). Skye's perspective is set in present day and we follow her from her engagement onward. Burke's perspective is told in letters/journal entries to his therapist starting from the beginning of his relationship with Skye to the present. Heather's perspective is set in two different time periods; the first half is set thirty years ago and the second in present day. I liked the alternating perspectives as it kept things interesting as you would learn things in one point of view that would soon directly influence another. The author did a great job at making each voice unique, so I always knew who I was reading from.

The characters in this book aren't inherently likeable but that makes them no less interesting. Skye is desperate for love and with her OCD, she feels like it won't happen for her. She's very naïve at times but it comes from a place of wanting to be accepted for who she is which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Burke I had a bit of a hard time with as I didn't see him as charming or sweet or however else Skye saw him. I struggled with the relationship between these two because of this and just couldn't figure out what Skye saw in him. In my mind he was a manipulative liar which made him hard to like but I feel like he was well written for what he was. Heather was the most interesting of the three characters to me. She's quite different in the first half of the book compared to the second, but once you know why she's that way, it makes perfect sense.

Ultimately what dropped this book from a four stars to a three was the ending. I didn't like the ending at all and will explain why under a spoiler tag. (view spoiler)

Overall while I didn't like the ending, Too Good to Be True was still an enjoyable read and I would recommend it if you're looking for an intriguing thriller.