Four women.
Four secrets.
A weekend that will change them forever...if they survive.
Katie Manning was a beloved child star until her mid-teens when her manager attacked and permanently scarred her face, effectively ending her career and sending her on a path of all-too-familiar post-Hollywood self-destruction.
Now twenty-seven, Katie wants a better answer to those clickbait "Where Are They Now?" articles that float around online. An answer she hopes to find when her brother's too-good-to-be-true fiancé invites her to a wellness retreat upstate. Together with Katie's two best friends-one struggling with crippling debt and family obligations, one running away from a failed job and relationship-Katie will try to find the inner peace promised at the tranquil retreat. But finding oneself just might drudge up more memories than Katie is prepared to deal with.
Each woman has come to the retreat for different reasons. Each has her secrets to hide. And at the end of this weekend, only one will be left standing.
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[This place had made a killer out of her]***
(Titan Books, 13 August 2019, 432 pages, ebook, ARC from @TitanBooks and voluntarily reviewed, #BlogTour 20 August)
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This book completely blew my mind. I thought I know what to expect but I was mostly wrong. This is a good thing, believe me. The book opens with a bang during the aftermath of seemingly shocking events. I knew I was going to love this book before I reached the end of the first page. Nothing about The Retreat is what I expected it to be. The four women couldn't be more different and I loved the way the author explores the friction between them. Kate and her two so-called best friends didn't seem very close. It was clear Carmen and April only gave Katie the time of day because of her fame and money. They never come across as true friends. Ellie, the fiancé of Katie's brother made my skin scrawl from the get go. The book is packing with troubling events and I never really know what was going on. The author does a brilliant job at building suspense and mystery. When the truth is revealed, I never saw it coming. This is a corker.