56 Days - Catherine Ryan Howard

Mystery

Rating: 8.5/10

How much time do you need to meet someone, fall in love, move in together, tell each other epic lies, break up and then potentially end up a decomposing corpse on your own bathroom floor?  56 days should do it apparently.

With the threat of COVID-19 looming, Ciara and Oliver meet in line at the supermarket and take a chance at spontaneity with a plan for a first date.  When a lockdown threatens to put a damper on their newfound romance, they make the rash decision to move in together.

What better place to hide deep dark secrets than under the cover of a global pandemic?  Everyone’s eyes are on the numbers, and no one will be watching you. Better still, you can cover you face with a mask so no one will recognize you. Maybe enough time will pass that people will lose interest. Maybe you can leave your dark misdeeds behind you when this is all over. Maybe.  Maybe not.

Flipping back and forth in a clever countdown and with the same events being depicted by both characters, with wildly different interpretations, this book will keep you on your toes.

The author deftly wields the lies that fill this book, adopting a catch and release tactic that shows how easy it is to twist the truth and how impossible it is to keep hold of the slippery deceptions. 

A sharp and stellar thriller!

P.S. I feel it’s important to clarify that I would not define this as a COVID-19 thriller.  It merely plays a peripheral role in this cleverly crafted read.

Book Pairing(s): Woman In The Window by A.J. Finn, My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing, Girl Gone Mad by Avery Bishop