Out 7th Sept 2017 Best Day Ever by Kaira Rouda

Publication date 7^th September 2017

Book description:

I glance at my wife as she climbs into the passenger seat, and I am bursting with confidence. Today will be everything I’ve promised her…and more…

Paul Strom has the perfect life: a glittering career as an advertising executive, a beautiful wife, two healthy boys and a big house in a wealthy suburb. And he’s the perfect husband: breadwinner, protector, provider. That’s why he’s planned a romantic weekend for his wife, Mia, at their lake house, just the two of them. And he's promised today will be the best day ever.

But as Paul and Mia drive out of the city and toward the countryside, a spike of tension begins to wedge itself between them and doubts start to arise. How much do they trust each other? And how perfect is their marriage, or any marriage, really?

Forcing us to ask ourselves just how well we know those who are closest to us, Best Day Ever crackles with dark energy, spinning ever tighter toward its shocking conclusion. In the bestselling, page-turning vein of The Couple Next Door and The Dinner, Kaira Rouda weaves a gripping, tautly suspenseful tale of deception and betrayal dark enough to destroy a marriage…or a life.

My thoughts

Having read the description of this book I was interested to know why the perfect sounding Paul Strom could possibly want to get rid of his wife.  With 2 young boys, a great job, a beautiful home – and a second home by the lake for holidays – what could possibly be wrong? After all, he is promising her the Best Day Ever…

There is so much tension crackling between Paul and his wife Mia throughout their car journey to the lake house.  Paul cannot understand why Mia is bombarding him with questions when he has promised her that their weekend alone together will be the best day ever.  He has it all planned and under control until all of a sudden he doesn’t and events run away with him in a direction he really doesn’t want them to go.

We are drip fed information about Paul – or Poker face Paul as he likes to be known – all told from his deluded point of view.  He is a fabulous case study of a narcissist who is so wrapped up in his own version of his life that he cannot even contemplate that someone else could possibly know that the real Paul Strom is nothing like the image he portrays.

Skeletons tumble out of closets as Mia presents him with her knowledge of how he has been living a double life for months and has been planning her demise.  His carefully laid plans are totally scuppered by Mia and their neighbour Buck as the realisation dawns that Mia has been making plans of her own and they don’t involve Paul.  In typical Paul style, he quickly recalculates and makes alternative arrangements for this to still be his Best Day Ever.

I love an unreliable narrator and the more credible a bad guy the better for me.  I don’t think they come much more unlikeable than Paul Strom, and I was a bit disappointed by the ending in one respect.  However having thought over the outcome, I do wonder whether we could hear more from him in the future from this author. That would make for very interesting reading and I would be at the front of the queue to buy a copy of that tale.

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for an advance copy of this title in return for my honest review.