Too Good To Be True by Carola Lovering is about Burke Michaels, a former felon from the wrong side of the tracks who’s struggling to support his family. Burke’s inability to provide puts a strain on his marriage, and on a solo getaway in Montauk he finds himself falling for another woman. When Burke discovers that his side piece, Skye, stands to inherit a mountain of money from her wealthy family, he can’t believe his luck. Maybe she’ll be his one-way ticket out of debt and a way to give his wife and kids the life they always wanted…
Carola Lovering’s penchant for deftly defined characterization first struck me in her angst-ridden debut novel, Tell Me Lies, which I couldn’t stop thinking about months after reading. She reinforces this gift in Too Good To Be True, in which the characters feel eerily real, like acquaintances I haven’t seen in awhile. The alternating POV isn’t always my cup of tea, but it works here and imbues the novel with an element of suspense and surprise. Too Good To Be True kept me guessing the entire time and I enjoyed bearing witness to Burke and Heather’s game of cat and mouse.
My one minor criticism is that the book seemed perhaps 20% longer than it needed to be. I see that other readers complained about the overly loquacious purple prose, but that’s actually a quality that I prefer in a novel so it didn’t deter me. I would recommend Too Good To Be True to readers who are looking for an engaging and character-driven domestic suspense novel chock full of lies. The plot was fantastic and the sheer amount of twists and reveals were genius. I promise you’ll polish it off in just a few sittings!
Rating: 4/5 Stars
Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review.
