This book. set in Australia, focuses on two couples who seem to be very happily married: Pippa and Gabe and Amanda and Max. The wives, Pippa and Amanda, are deeply in love with their husbands and can't picture their lives without them.
The millennials, Pippa and Gabe, met in the botanic gardens when Gabe was a groomsman at a wedding and Pippa was taking a walk with her sister. Gabe is handsome and charming and Pippa immediately agreed to go on a date with him.
Pippa and Gabe have been married for several years and have two preschool age daughters. Freya and Asha, whom they adore. Pippa is an estate lawyer and Gabe is a stay-at-home dad.
The middle-aged couple, Amanda and Max, met nearly thirty years ago when amateur photographer Amanda was waitressing at a party where wealthy businessman Max was a guest.
The spouses have been married for decades, have no children, and live a luxurious life of vacations, travel, opulent homes, high-end events, etc.
Gabe and Pippa have moved several times and are now settled in Portsea, a sleepy coastal town a couple of hours outside Melbourne. When the couple took a shine to the Portsea house, they were unaware that it's location, on a cliff called 'The Drop', was the scene of frequent suicides.
Pippa and Gabe purchased the home anyway, and Gabe has now 'talked down' seven people who were about to throw themselves from the cliff. In fact Gabe is famous for being a kind of suicide whisperer, and has been written up in the local paper as a hero.
Then the day comes when a woman approaches the cliff, Gabe goes out to do his magic....and he's unsuccessful. The woman falls to her death. Moreover, as Pippa is watching from the window, the interaction between Jack and the woman seems to be contentious. Could Jack have pushed the woman from the cliff?
It turns out the dead woman is Amanda. As the police look into Amanda's death, the rest of the story - narrated in the alternating voices of Pippa and Amanda - goes back and forth between the past and the present.
We learn that Gabe and Pippa's union had some rough patches, and Gabe had several jobs before he became a domestic husband. Pippa was supportive throughout, as were her parents and her sister Kat and Kat's wife Mei. In fact the whole extended family has now moved to Portsea, and are on hand for babysitting, helping prepare meals, and so on.
As for Amanda and Max, we learn Max is a wily (sometimes ruthless) businessman, and has been 'creative' in finding investors so he can take his enterprise online, which is a very expensive proposition.
Amanda still dabbles in photography and has little to do with Max's professional affairs. However, Amanda makes it her business to always looks elegant and socialize at important functions, which is a great help to Max both personally and professionally.
As the story progresses it's clear there's a connection between the two couples, Pippa and Gabe and Amanda and Max, and - as the truth is slowly revealed - the suspense is edge-of-your-seat compelling. How far should a woman go, and how much should she overlook, to keep her marriage intact? I think author Sally Hepworth wants the reader to think about that.
I enjoyed the book, which is a good combination of mystery and domestic drama.
Rating: 3.5 stars
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