The Last Mrs. Parrish By Liv Constantine
Genre: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery
Pages: 400 pages
Published: October 17th 2017
Publisher: Harper
My Rating: 2 out of 5 Stars
Synopsis: Some women get everything. Some women get everything they deserve.
Amber Patterson is fed up. She’s tired of being a nobody: a plain, invisible woman who blends into the background. She deserves more—a life of money and power like the one blond-haired, blue-eyed goddess Daphne Parrish takes for granted.
To everyone in the exclusive town of Bishops Harbor, Connecticut, Daphne—a socialite and philanthropist—and her real-estate mogul husband, Jackson, are a couple straight out of a fairy tale.
Amber’s envy could eat her alive . . . if she didn’t have a plan. Amber uses Daphne’s compassion and caring to insinuate herself into the family’s life—the first step in a meticulous scheme to undermine her. Before long, Amber is Daphne’s closest confidante, traveling to Europe with the Parrishes and their lovely young daughters, and growing closer to Jackson. But a skeleton from her past may undermine everything that Amber has worked towards, and if it is discovered, her well-laid plan may fall to pieces.
With shocking turns and dark secrets that will keep you guessing until the very end, The Last Mrs. Parrish is a fresh, juicy, and utterly addictive thriller from a diabolically imaginative talent.
My Thoughts : So I had been wanting to read The Last Mrs. Parrish when I first heard about it. I put it off for some reason. Last year when I went to a book signing they were part of the panel. I had no idea that the author was two sisters. So I decided since they were going to be there I’d pick the book up and get it signed by them. I finally decided to pick it up when I was doing Bookish Advent Calendar created By Becky @Uptown Oracle. Which was trying a chapter a day leading up to Christmas. (spoiler alert: I still need to read 3 chapters) So The Last Mrs. Parrish interested me and I finally decided to pick it up. I really enjoyed the first chapter. Sadly though as I continued to read I was not a fan of this book. I really should have DNF’d it and just read people’s reviews to find out what happened. I was very disappointed.
The Last Mrs. Parrish is about a girl named Amber who grew up with not much. She’s tired of living that type of life. She comes up with a plan to befriend this rich guy’s wife to get closer to him. She will do whatever it takes to have the life she’s always dreamed about.
I have to say I absolutely hated Amber, who is the main character in the first part of the book. She’s the one who is tired of being poor and is ready to live the life of luxury. She is probably one of the worst characters I ever had to read. She has no feelings for anyone but herself. She tricks Daphne into thinking she also had a sister that passed away from the same disease. She does that just to get close to her. She thinks she is owed the life of luxury just because she grew up poor. Instead of working hard and trying to make a name for herself she decides she needs a rich husband to take care of her. She’s constantly going on and on about how rich everyone she encounters is. It gets really boring and repetitive. I really wanted to stop reading but then I was like no let me push through maybe it will get better.
Then for the second part of the book the perspective is told by Daphne. So you basically get to learn more of the behind the scenes of her life and her marriage. I have to say I feel she wasn’t a very exciting character. I thought she was an average character but I did find her chapters a lot more interesting. I really say anything without giving things away. I do have to say I was happy for her in the end. I do wish things played out a little differently. I thought it was a very messed up ending and wasn’t what I was going for but decently happy for Daphne. I will get into spoilers soon because I have so much to say about this book but I can’t without spoiling but I really want to include that because I just need to let it out.
Overall this book really disappointed me. I feel it was advertised falsely. I can see it being a bit psychological but I didn’t feel there was much mystery or really thrill to the story. The story did have to deal with some really messed up people but that was really it. I really disliked Amber a lot. I feel she was way too over the top. I also was pretty bored with a good chunk of the story. I get that Amber is jealous of all these rich people and wants to live that life but you don’t need to constantly remind us of it. We get it! I am debating checking out their second book. I might but I want to look into it before deciding.
Spoilers Ahead
Okay so I really want to talk about the spoilers of this book. I feel this book was a hard one to talk about without really spoiling anything. I did get some spoilers for this book while reading it and I was a bit upset about but they didn’t really surprise me. I just needed to know if this book was worth continuing with. I felt like it wasn’t. There are a lot of better thrillers out there.
The first problem I had was how there was no murder in this book at all! I really thought maybe Amber was going to kill Daphne and maybe tell Jackson and be like if you ever try to replacement this will happen. That didn’t happen. Then there was a part in the story when Daphne’s friend tells her that Amber’s real name isn’t Amber. So it has you thinking what really happened to the real Amber. Did this lady have something to do with it? No she didn’t. Then there were times in the story when Jackson threaten to kill Daphne. That never happened. Once he finally gets married to Amber he also threatens her but doesn’t do it. So no death and murder at all.
Another thing that I was hoping would have happened to make the story interesting is if Amber had a girl instead of a boy. In the story Daphne realizes how Amber is playing her and she wants out of her marriage because Jackson is a horrible and abusive. So she starts giving Amber all these little insights to their marriage and basically helps her get closer to him. One of the things she tells Amber is how much Jackson really wants a boy. He would do anything for one. So Amber schemes and finally gets pregnant. I don’t remember what exactly happens but she either like prints out a fake sonogram or edits the one she has to make it look like a boy. She never goes to the doctor to find out if it is or not. I would have loved for some juicy drama if her water breaks and oops it actually was a girl. I guess that didn’t work for what the authors had in mind for the ending.
Lastly I was very mixed about the ending. I was so happy for Daphne. She got out of her horrible marriage. She got full custody of the kids. She was able to build back her relationship with her Mom. She finally was free of Jackson’s hold on her. She ends up getting one of the members of the foundation she runs to apply for a job at Jackson’s company. She knows he’ll get picked because he’s a guy. He does some snooping and finds out Jackson has these offshore bank accounts that I believe he doesn’t pay taxes for or something along those lines. So they get Jackson arrested. She goes and confronts Amber about it. She tells Amber how she figured out she was playing her to get closer to Jackson. Amber asks her for help to get out of the marriage as well. Daphne is just like no sorry I don’t want to. Honestly I felt that was a bit messed up. She knew how horrible Jackson was. She experienced it first hand. To have someone else go through the same thing is horrible. That’s basically what the authors wanted. I didn’t realize until reading reviews that the tagline for this story is: Some women get everything. Some women get everything they deserve. So basically you’re suppose to be happy that Amber ended up like that which is pretty cringy. I was feel she could have helped her out and then she never had to talk to her again.
Anyway as you can see I was not a fan of this book. It really disappointed me. I had a lot of opinions on it. I do still wish I DNF’d it but oh well. I just thought things would get better. They got slightly more interesting but I didn’t have a fun time reading this one. I did see a lot of other people really liked this and maybe you but wasn’t for me.
Have you guys ended up reading this book? If so what were your thoughts on it. If not, is this book on your TBR? Are you planning to read it? Let me know in the comments.
Bookish In Bed
Twitter | Instagram | Goodreads
Bookish In Bed 