Magpie – Elizabeth Day

Summary

Marisa and Jake are a perfect couple. And Kate, their new lodger, is the perfect roommate—and not just because her rent payments will give them the income they need to start trying for the baby of their dreams.

Except—no one is truly perfect. Sure, Kate doesn’t seem to care much about personal boundaries and can occasionally seem overly familiar with Jake. But Marisa doesn’t let it concern her, knowing that soon Kate will be gone, and it will just be her, Jake, and their future baby.

Conceiving a baby is easier said than done, though, and Jake and Marisa’s perfect relationship is put to the test through months of fertility treatments and false starts. To make matters worse, Kate’s boundary-pushing turns into an all-out obsession—with Jake, with Marisa, and with their future child. Who is this woman? Why does she seem to know everything about Marisa and Jake?

In her quest to find out who Kate really is, Marisa might destroy everything she’s worked so hard to create—her perfect romance, her perfect family, and her perfect self.

Jake doesn’t know the half of what Marisa has created—and what she stands to lose.

For fans of Gone Girl and The Perfect Nanny, Magpie is a “tense” (The Guardian), “gorgeous” (Lisa Taddeo, bestselling author of Three Women), “completely, terrifyingly brilliant” (Marian Keyes, author of Grown Ups) novel about mothers and children, envy and possession, and the dangers of getting everything you’ve ever dreamed of.

Review

Ok so, for the review I hid some character info as to not give out any spoilers nor the direction the way the book heads towards to BUT! You can check out the summary post where everything is laid out and I discuss my thoughts in deeper.

For some reason I thought this had horror elements so I kept waiting for the gritty punch to come and then……the book ended. To say I was disappointed comes a bit short, but it was my own fault so I’m still giving this 3 stars because honestly, it was a well written book and it really is thrilling. The funny thing is that, while reading, I kept thinking wow, this would be a good thriller mystery instead of horror LOL.

Narrated in third person, we experience 2 POV’s, Kate’s and Marisa’s. The juxtaposition of the POV’s when they meet in the same timeline of events is delightful, and the different perspectives of the same events and dialogues works so well, I’ll delve into this more in the spoiler post but Elizabeth Day! That was great work.

I don’t even know what The Party is about but I can’t wait to read it!