Spoiler Alert towards end of review This book was so much fun to read. It brought me back to books I loved in my late teenage years, ( Sidney Sheldon and Harold Robbins.) I so rooted for Bea to become a woman of dignity and respect. And oh how I wanted to punch out gale haha. . I kinda figured bea s mom hadn't died. But her return did not disappoint.

Stone Cold Fox by Rachel Koller Craft hooked me right from the beginning. I fell in love with the author’s writing style. There is s certain style that I love and its hard to put into words what it is exactly, maybe witty combined with smart writing and a mildly unlikeable character? Very few books have this but this one does. I immediately connected with the main character and her plight to be financially stable and successful while avoiding her mother’s dark influence thanks to a dysfunctional childhood.

Like any enterprising woman, Bea knows what she’s worth and is determined to get all she deserves—it just so happens that what she deserves is to marry rich. Filthy rich. After years of forced instruction by her mother in the art of swindling men, a now-solo Bea wants nothing more than to close and lock the door on their sordid partnership so she can disappear safely into old-money domesticity, sealing the final phase of her escape.

When Bea chooses her ultimate target in the fully-loaded, thoroughly dull and blue-blooded Collin Case, she’s ready to deploy all of her tricks one last time. The challenge isn’t getting the ring, but rather the approval of Collin’s family and everyone else in their 1 percent tax bracket, particularly his childhood best friend, Gale Wallace-Leicester. Going toe-to-toe with Gale isn’t a threat to an expert like Bea, but what begins as an amusing cat-and-mouse game quickly develops into a dangerous pursuit of the grisly truth. Finding herself at a literal life-and-death crossroads, with everything on the line, Bea must finally decide who she really wants to be. Like mother, like daughter?

DO NOT MISS THIS BOOK! It comes out February 14, 2023

Bea was raised by her conwoman mother to use her looks to get whatever she needs from men and to discard them as soon as they're used up, but now she's running her last con by marrying into a 1-percenter family and leaving her shady past behind her for good.

I loved a lot of things about this book -- Bea was complicated, damaged, and ruthless, and I couldn't help rooting for her to succeed in her plan to marry bland as oatmeal Collin and his giant teeth and live a safe and easy life of luxury. It was hard to find fault with her for using her skills to dupe a dingdong rich dude who thinks she's hot into marrying her. Her battles with Gale were so much fun to read and the flashbacks to her traumatic past with her mother showed how Bea was shaped by the things she experienced. The ending was BANANAS in all the best ways.

Overall this was a really strong debut, and I'll happily read anything else Croft writes in the future.

This book is a solid five stars. I don’t think I’ve ever met a main character quite like this one. I could not stop reading this book and the ending, WOW.

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: None
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

Apparently the theme of my reading at the moment, by pure accident, is … bad mothers? In case I was sort in the mood for a dirty psychological thriller and Stone Cold Fox delivered in spades.

The book basically concerns its heroine Bea’s attempt to marry into one of the richest oldest families in the US. Raised to be a conwoman by a ruthless conwoman, Bea has decided to put her hard won skills to securing a stable future for herself. Um, and plot-wise that’s basically it. Needless to say, there’s opposition to the marriage from the fiancé’s family and especially from his over-protective best friend, a woman who is herself obsessively in love with his. And then, of course, there’s the inevitable reckoning with the past Bea is trying to outrun, particularly her relationship with her mother, for whom the thrill of the con was everything.

First off, I fucking loved Bea. I can’t remember the last time I quite so viscerally needed a fictional character to get absolutely everything she wanted no matter what it cost anyone else. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not what you’d exactly call a good person—ambitious, manipulative, ruthless, judgemental, borderline sociopathic—but she’s also been profoundly (and I do mean profoundly) damaged by her upbringing and there’s just enough vulnerability in her narration (buried, though it is, beneath layer after layer of competence and bravado) that I was unabashedly and shamelessly on her side. Bea is so archetypically “a bad woman” (in the sense of seeming to embody every misogynistic cliché of the beautiful, heartless, social-climbing femme fatale: keyword *seeming*) that it’s impossible not to root for her, especially because I can’t really muster all that sympathy for the 1% having their rarefied sphere violated by an upstart. Like, #TeamUpstart all the way? (Also she doesn’t like the word ‘panty’ and neither do I, so I feel we’re basically soulmates at this point).

At its heart, this is a book about relationships between women, and the way those relationships are inevitably shaped by patriarchal power. The tension—which is so tight it’s a corkscrew by the mid-point—is never really about Bea and Collin (the hyper-privileged bloke she’s attempting to marry). It’s about the women who surround him: his female best friend, Gale, his mother, even his new secretary who seems very eager to form an alliance with Bea. And the writing is never so taut, so dynamic, sparking with an energy that feels perilously close to sexual, than in the early power games between Bea and Gale. It’s also kind of fascinating that when the book opens, Bea is very quick to look down on Gale for all the things women are not supposed to judge women for, but as the narrative progresses it becomes apparent that there are way worse things to think about and do to people than be internally catty about their choice of lipstick.

There’s so much about Stone Cold Fox I found fascinating, from the way the narrative is constructed (it does the ol’ leaping back and forth between the past and the present that so many thrillers do but the way the two interleave and escalate is incredibly precise), to the balancing act it plays with its characters (Collin, for example, comes across as genuinely well-meaning if weak, self-centred and tedious—you could see why he would be a safe choice for Bea), to the bold choices it makes with its heroine. It’s kind of simultaneously refreshing and alienating to see her own her beauty (very few people, I think, do not feel threatened by the beautiful), but I also appreciated the way that—while she is clearly naturally striking—beauty in the conventional sense of thin, groomed, and elegant is always presented as actual work. I should add that the book is also very funny, in an uncompromisingly acerbic way:

"Collin Case, born on September 8. A Virgo man. My kind of guy. A crushing need to be seen as perfect, which is exactly the type of pressure I wanted a man to feel in my presence."

Despite its willingness to Go There in, occasionally, quite shocking ways, I did also appreciate how careful the book is with Bea. Obviously, I personally have endless time for unsympathetic, damaged characters who have trouble with emotions but I think, even if that wasn’t your particular jam, there’s still scope to find nuance and complexity in Bea (at least once she lets down her narrative guards a little). There’s something genuinely heart-breaking, for example, about her relationship with her own past: she understands her mother is toxic and dangerous, but she never really lets go of the conviction that the things that were done to her (she was a child: things were done to her, she did not do things) render her unlovable and are fundamentally incompatible with the life she is trying to build for herself with Collin would be over. It’s an emotionally difficult, but, for me, right-feeling creative choice that Bea never confronts this directly nor finds any specific closure with it (plus it would undermine everything for her future to hinge on Collin’s capacity for empathy). This is not a book that’s interested in simple answers, even if means that one of the questions that remains is the degree to which Bea is justified in her conviction that she would be condemned, or held responsible, for the way she was treated as a child.

All of which said, the book is also not without a little softness. There are moments of genuine hope and connection for Bea, and while the life of determined wifehood she is trying to choose makes my toes curl with private horror I understood its advantages for her and her reasons for choosing it. Though, of course, she does struggle with her own more thrill-seeking impulses, and I didn’t feel the book, in general, was keen to present anything to us as uncomplicatedly positive.

Anyway, this is a dark and engaging read, deeply steeped in questions of sex, power, and gender. Highly recommended if that’s your thing, or if you fancy a highly character-driven thriller with a stone cold banger of an ending.

Yes! For so long I didn’t have so much fun! Such a fantastic, riveting, addictive reading! The cat fight, mind games between the characters made me chant!

Of course I absolutely rooted for the anti heroine: she was so determined, relentless, smart! I couldn’t expect to connect with a drifter, a successful con artist, a gold digger: but Bea( Of course this is not her real name! ) wooed me at first chapter. I enjoyed to read her perspective, her dark sense of humor. She seems like cruel woman who chooses the easy way, being a trophy wife, lying about her identity by rewriting her life story to become perfect daughter in law to filthy rich Case family! But trust me, she’s absolutely more than that!

When you read about Bea’s challenging childhood memories and her dysfunctional interactions with her real mother from hell, you truly realize the reason she chose a different lifestyle because she didn’t know any better and her role model mother a.k.a. Lilith formed in human body taught her how to become a cold hearted witch!

Now Bea has a perfect job, climbing corporate ladders with her perfect negotiation-manipulation skills, dating with filthy rich Colin Case: last good and naive guy who is easily gaslighted. She’s so close to become his wife even though her future mother in law already offers to pay her off at their first meeting.

But she has a big obstacle standing between her and her HEA: the obstacle’s name is Gale Wallace- Leicester : best friend of Colin, obviously in love with him forever! She has no intention to let any woman come between them and Bea can be ruthless enemy when she sees an obstacle preventing to accomplish her mission.

Both of the women are ready to sharpen their claws, adamant to play dirty! Let the cat fights begin! But what if Gale or someone else finds something about Bea’s buried past, what if her secrets come out and both of her worlds collide each other!

How far Bea can go to protect her future? Let’s take our reserved place from front seat and enjoy this wild ride!

I had amazing time! Twists, riveting pacing, increasing tension between two women were so enjoyable! I highly recommend this delicious, entertaining, smart novel!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for sharing this amazing digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest opinions.

This was a solid 3.8 the whole way, readable, compelling, a main character you hate to love, but that ending? That ending knocked me the fuck out.