I have mixed feelings about this book. It had a great plot with a few surprises and twists, but at the same time was somewhat predictable. The story gets in your head and you can’t stop thinking about it. The chapters were a little long for me and there was only one method of knocking off people that felt too repetitive. Maybe it was because each incident was spontaneous with similar circumstances.
If you enjoy reading thrillers, this is a good one to read!
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Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Group Putnam for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This book is a decent read that weaves together mystery and romance in an intriguing way. While the plot had its engaging moments, the pacing felt uneven at times, leaving me wanting more consistency. The characters were well-developed and certainly relatable, drawing me into their world. While it was a little slow to start, it did have some really good twists. We learn in the first chapter that Lucy sees her friend Scott with another woman in a photo that had been taken in the Maldives. The storyline was a bit predictable and sorta easy to figure out. A series of events has Lucy asking herself if she was imagining things. This is a quick and easy book to read. #netgalley #thecoupleinthephoto

Helen Cooper returns following The Downstairs Neighbor and The Other Guest with her latest gripping domestic suspense, THE COUPLE IN THE PHOTO.

When a woman sees her best friend's husband in a photo with another woman, she has to decide how far she will go to keep this secret; however, she has no clue how far this web of deceit and lies will go that may impact her own family.

Lucy is married to Adam and has two daughters, Tilly and Fran. They are best friends with Cora and Scott. They (Taylors and the Waughs) co-own a beach Norfolk cottage, and their children are friends. Scott, Adam, and Cora went to the same university.

Lucy is at work and sees honeymoon photos from Ruth, her co-worker, and in one of the photos, she spots their friend Scott with another woman. She questioned her friend, and Ruth said they were a lovely couple, Jason and Anne, and they spent time together.

What was Scott doing in Maldives with another woman?

She comes home and tells her husband, Adam, but Adam says it cannot be him since he is in Japan. Cora and their children, Ivy and Joe, would be devastated. The Waughs were like family to her. They had been best friends for fifteen years.

She is determined to protect her best friend from possible infidelity, but when she learns that the woman in the photo has gone missing, she fears Scott was involved.

A chill washes over her when she sees the news of a British woman missing from an island resort in Maldives. Her name was Juliet Noor (not Anna), and she failed to return home. She apparently was staying alone and working on a novel. She was later found murdered.

Lucy is obsessed with searching for answers while it escalates, pouring over social media and this woman's past. Who is keeping secrets? She suspects Adam, Cora, and Scott know more than they are saying. Is she the only one in the dark? How deep does this go?

There is also a mysterious POV in italics that adds mystery and intrigue.

The plot thickens between the three regarding a cover-up from the past. What appears as a close friendship is anything but when the secrets and lies are unraveled.

When the truth comes out, how far this web of lies goes is explosive, starting from the past and its aftermath. There is something more sinister than an affair, and someone else winds up dead.

Wow! THE COUPLE IN THE PHOTO is my first book by Helen Cooper, and I look forward to reading more! Lucy was a great character and highly relatable. This story was realistic and could be ripped from today's headlines. What happens when you learn the truth? Two picture-perfect families with cracks that run deep below the surface.

The author cleverly builds suspense and tension as we follow Lucy, trying to make sense of everything and unravel the secrets. Lucy does not know the level of deception, lies, and manipulation from her husband and friends. No one is as they appear, except for Lucy—many pieces of the puzzle make for a great mystery with adults misbehaving.

Thought-provoking, an exploration of marriages, friendships, and secret pasts. A page-turning domestic suspense that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

How well do you know those closest to you? From well-developed characters to a clever plot with unreliable narrators, for a twisty, engrossing domestic suspense of lies, deceit, manipulation, betrayal, and secrets—how many people and its aftermath ultimately affects marriages, friendship, and motherhood.

THE COUPLE IN THE PHOTO is for fans of Kimberly Belle, Robin Harding, Sally Hepworth, B.A. Paris, and Mary Kubica. I look forward to reading more from this author!

Thanks to PENGUIN GROUP Putnam and NetGalley for a digital advanced reading copy for an honest review.

Blog review posted @
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@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks
My Rating: 4.5 Stars, rounded to 5
Pub Date: Dec 5, 2023
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A great thriller that kept me guessing. I really enjoyed this. An intriguing domestic thriller with an exotic element. Recommended for fans of thrillers.

This book is exactly what I look for in a good thriller! From the first chapter, the mystery begins and it keeps you hooked until the very end! Lucy and her husband, Adam, are best friends with another couple, Scott and Cora. Adam, Scott, and Cora went to school together and have been friends ever since. Adam later introduced Lucy to Scott and Cora and they have all become like family to eachother. One day, Lucy is looking at her co-worker, Ruth’s, photos of her honeymoon in the Maldives and she sees Scott in one of the pictures with a woman who is not Cora. Lucy is already upset thinking that Scott is cheating on her best friend, when she finds out that the woman in the photo has gone missing. She decides to investigate and won’t stop until she gets answers. However, the more she digs, the more she starts questioning whether everything is as it seems and if she really knows the people she is closest to. Even Ruth doesn’t seem to want to help.

This is a fast paced thriller that you won’t want to put down! I am definitely looking forward to reading more by this author!

Thank you to @netgalley and @putnambooks for this advanced reader copy.

The author did a great job holding my attention with this story! It started off with a bang, and kept the pace. There was so much gaslighting going on in this book, it was cray! We have two couples who are best friends. Lucy married Adam, and he has been friends with Cora and Scott since Uni. The college friends have a secret they need to stay buried that Lucy has no idea about. When Lucy’s coworker gets back from her honeymoon, she shows Lucy her photos. What Lucy spots startles her….Scott is in the Maldives with a woman who is NOT his wife. Lucy becomes obsessed with this, trying to figure out for certain if her eyes played a trick on her, or it really was Scott. Then the woman he was pictured with winds up dead. Lucy finds herself in a terrible predicament and SO MANY secrets start to unravel.

Read if you like:
🏘️ Couple Best Friends
📸 Catching Cheaters
🚗 Two Potentially Connected Deaths
💻 Mysterious Emails
2️⃣ Two-ish POV
🔍 Domestic Thrillers

This book did something really unique for me in that it was a single pov but then you get a pov talking and sharing but you don’t know who it is and the pov is always just brief enough that it keeps you guessing throughout the book until towards the end you get the details needed to know who the pov is from.

This a twisty and pretty fast paced read as you read along with Lucy as she is trying to figure out what is going on, all sparked from a photo of a couple that a coworker showed her that happens to have one of their best friends in the pick the, but it isn’t his wife he was with coupled up in the photo, and then things go dark fast when the woman in the picture is reported as deceased and her coworker suddenly isn’t around and won’t talk to her when she does find her.

It all gets more and more twisty as Lucy starts to feel like the odd man out and like there are secrets being kept from her from husband and their couple best friend Scott and Cora especially as Lucy isn’t letting go of the photo and the implications that Scott might have had something to do with her death.

I loved the layers of the unraveling of secrets that you get and whether or not you can piece together all the parts of the picture with or faster than Lucy to see the whole picture of what really happened and what is the really truth not another lie meant to continue to bury the truth.

Thank you so much Putnam for my ARC of this thriller in exchange for my honest review! It was definitely a thrill to read!

Lucy and her husband Adam have a great marriage and two adorable kids! They spend all of their free time with their best friends (Adam's former roommates from college) Nora and Scott and their kids. It seems like the perfect dynamic and one big happy family. Until one day Lucy's coworker Ruth is showing her pictures from her honeymoon and Lucy thinks she spots Scott with someone other than Cora but that isn't possible! For some reason Lucy cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong and she cannot keep herself from digging into the past. Things go from picture perfect to an absolute nightmare when it all comes unraveled.

Thank you netgalley, the author and the publisher for my ARC!

I liked this book. It definitely pulled me in and I kept reading because I needed to see the resolution. I was able to predict some of the ending pretty accurately, but I still enjoyed the book. I enjoyed that there was one narrator, but then there would be occasional passages from an unknown perspective to add to the suspense. It felt like an enjoyable thriller, even though it was a bit predictable.

The premise of this book was really good and I thoroughly enjoyed the ending, however the pacing was a little off for me.

Lucy is a teacher and when she looks at a coworkers honeymoon photos she sees a familiar face posing with a beautiful woman. Scott is the husband of her best friend Cora and her husband, Adam’s best friend. The only problem? The woman in the photo is not Cora. When Lucy sees a news report about a woman missing in the Maldives she immediately recognizes the woman as the woman in the photo with Scott.

The concept was great and the first couple of chapters were really gripping, but then it began to drag out and it felt like not much was happening for a while. It picked up the pace again with the ending, but it really could have been trimmed down to keep the book moving from those first few engrossing chapters.

Overall I enjoyed the story, but the pacing was a bit to inconsistent.

Can “idyllic” life of multiple families be ruined by one photo? Well you will have to read this book to find out.

I thought this was a fast paced story with just a few slow moments in the middle but don’t get discouraged because final twists will make your jaw drop.
Overall this was a decent mystery full of lies and ghosts from the past.

Thank you NetGalley, PENGUIN GROUP Putnam and the author for an ARC in exchange form my honest review.

I read this forever ago and never made the review and I feel terrible about it. 😭 I thought it was a really good book, and it is 100% a book you should go into completely blind when reading it 4/5 stars

Whew! This kept me up reading waaaay past my bedtime. I will say, when I started I had no idea where the book was going to go. It seemed pretty straight forward, but as it progressed there were so many twists and turns that I didn't see coming.

Lucy and her husband Adam have been best friends with Cora and Scott for years. They do everything together, their kids to do everything together, and they are even fixing up a house together. Scott, Lucy is in awe of how much Cora and Scott love each other, so when she sees Scott cozied up in a picture with another woman, she is immediately concerned. Lucy actually becomes obsessed with figuring out what is going on. She can't stop thinking, digging and investigating.

Initially, I was irritated by Lucy's obsession with the photo, but the more I thought about it, the more I could see how that could take over all aspects of her life and worm its way in to her brain. This was a very enjoyable read and I am looking forward to more by the author.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I enjoyed the book as a whole, but I didn’t LOVE it. I think part of the reason was because I figured out the twist in the first chapter which is a bummer. But the story itself was interesting. The pacing was a little off for me as well. The first half of the book was pretty slow, but once it hit about 50%, the pace picked up. I flew through the last half.

This is the first book I have read of Helen Cooper. I will read more of her work because I did enjoy it and found her writing style entertaining.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Lucy has a seemingly idyllic life. Her sweet caring husband Adam and their married best friends Scott and Cora are an impenetrable unit and are practically family. But when Lucy sees a picture of Scott with another woman on vacation, she starts to realize that not everything is as it seems and when the woman in the picture goes missing, Lucy must take a closer look at the people she loves most and consider that they may not be who she thought they were.

*Special thanks to NetGalley and GP Putnam's Sons for this e=arc.*

I liked the uniqueness of the story, but couldnt really get into it. So sorry but this wasnt for me.

Thank you to NetGalley fora n advanced digital copy of this book.

Lucy and Adam are best friends with Cora and Scott. In fact, Adam, Cora, and Scott were best friends at Uni and added Lucy to the group when she married Adam. Each couple has two children, who are also all best friends, and the families together own a damaged beach cottage that they work to renovate. Their lives are perfect.

And then one day Lucy is idly glancing at a co-worker's phone pictures from her honeymoon in the Maldives and she spots what is undeniably Scott with his arms around a woman who is definitely not Cora. Is she mistaken? Scott was supposedly in Tokyo, so how can this be him? When she tries to look at the pictures again, she can't find her friend has taken a few days off. And then she sees a news report that the woman in the picture has gone missing, and is soon found dead in the Maldives. And then the co-worker is attacked in her home!!

It seems the college friends have more to their story than they have shared with Lucy and as she slowly finds out the whole truth, her life, along with all those perfect lives, are changed forever.

A good story, with lots of twists and turns, but it could have been told sooner. There is a lot of detail that wasn't really needed. I was tempted to stop reading a couple of times, but I am glad that I stuck it out.

This drew me in from the very beginning. It starts when a woman sees a picture of her best friends husband in a picture on some trip with another woman. Does she tell her best friend or keep it to herself? Does she confront the husband or wait until he slips up or comes clean? She starts questioning Does she really know her own husband as much as she thought she did? When the woman in the picture goes missing its time to work to put the puzzle pieces together of what happened and which one of the ones who she is so close to involved? This one will have you thinking you know pretty early on but the ending will shock you.

I really tried to like this book, but after working my way through it over a long period I just couldn't connect with the characters or the storyline. I kept reading a bit, stopping and coming back, finally getting through it.

The premise was good and should have been a great mystery, but I overall I felt an underlying current that Lucy was being gaslit by her husband Adam and their friends Cora and Scott. She always did feel a bit on the outside anyway, since the 3 of them met in school and she was late to the party.

I know there are many people who will thoroughly enjoy this story, but it just wasn't for me.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book, but my opinions are my own.

This was an okay read for me. It started off pretty fast-paced, and who doesn’t love a domestic thriller? But I felt like it kind of just hit a lull and never picked back up. The characters started to get on my nerves and the constant gaslighting of Lucy sucked. It was always the other 3, who are supposed to be her people, telling her she was crazy so they could keep each other’s secrets. There was definitely potential for this to be better- I think dual POVs might have been cool? But there just weren’t enough twists in the plot so the ending was just meh.