Keep Your Friends Close by Paula Daly: Flaky Family and a Female Psychopath Readable Thriller

Natty, perfectionist and workaholic owns a hotel owner in Windermere along with her husband Sean, when their daughter Felicity is taken to hospital to have her appendix out. And in steps old university friend, Eve to save the day and run the business while Natty is tending to her daughter.

Readable thriller

That’s when Eve sets to work seducing Natty’s husband by giving him a blowjob to win his heart. And it seemed, he had fallen heavily for this creepy usurper of their 16 old family home. From that point, I couldn’t care for his fate as he didn’t feel real.

Daly has an easy to read writing style that is a irresistible, even when some of the events left me dissatisfied. Natty’s silly decision to lie to the police about an altercation in the car park despite it all being caught on camera for instance. What was the point of lying? And then not being discrete enough about her secret enquiries about Eve’s past. Natty seemed to have chucked in logic for total meltdown.

Natty’s two daughters seem to accept Eve too readily despite Eve’s creepy behavior and Sean grew ever more oblivious to Eve’s scheming. Incredibly, the two daughters seem to accept Eve’s presence in the house whilst their mother has gone missing. The elder, Alice even hugs Eve when Alice's poor mother was trying to find the truth about Eve. Surely the daughters would form a united front against this usurper of their home?

Natty’s dad was the most likable character of the story, having more sense than the rest of them put together despite boozing and smoking weed. Joanne, the copper assigned to investigate also had a cool head, and could have saved a lot of grief if Natty had trusted her from the start.

Eve reminded me of Amy from Gone Girl, only Flynn’s female psychopath was a little more believable. Eve had similar thoughts as Amy about acting like the ‘cool girl’, acting out the ideal girlfriend that every fella wants.