The Mother-in-Law by Karen King

He loves you now. He loved her first.

I’ve fallen in love with a man called Sam. And he’s perfect, just perfect.

It’s a whirlwind romance. And when our dream home falls through just before our wedding, we decide to move in with his parents. He says his mother, Evelyn, is the sweetest person. But I’m not so sure.

She’s obsessively protective over Sam. She wants to know where he is all the time. She wakes us up in the morning, bustling into our room like he’s a small child, not a grown man. She doesn’t want me to be alone with him. And with every day that passes—as I keep having accidents I can’t believe are coincidental—I start to fear more that she doesn’t want me to marry her son.

That she wants to be the only person he will ever love.

Then I overhear an argument between her and Sam’s dad. Evelyn has a secret. And it changes everything I thought I knew about the family I’m marrying into.

From that moment, I know that if I want to make it to my wedding day alive, I will need to be very, very careful…

Review

I love wedding-themed thrillers; they have a certain je ne sais quoi.

Although there were some characters that ended up just being there to be red herrings, I think the plot twists and the main culprit were well conceived and then revealed in the last chapters, though I didn’t like how the final revelations panned out because the final scene felt so random and fast.

Dana’s and Sam’s relationship is whirlwind and passionate; wedding bells are ringing very fast. Daana can’t believe she has found a new ray of happiness in Sam until the perfect picture she imagined starts crashing down when she meets her future in-laws, more specifically, her MIL.

Loved Dana’s growth! Karen King has a great understanding of her characters and knows how to write them. I would say this book is character-driven but not like others; both plot and characterisation move along as you read further.

An enjoyable read, easy to read.