The Girl Friend by Michelle Frances

The Girlfriend - Michelle Francis

This book promises a “gripping and chilling debut psychological thriller”. It is gripping but it isn’t any of the other things. If you know that going in and you love reading about horrible people as much as I do, you’ll likely enjoy it much more. I requested it so long ago that I didn’t remember a thing about the blurb until I just went back and read it now and I’m glad of that!

 

Laura’s life is one of wealth and privilege but her marriage is devoid of warmth and love. She’s focused all of her love on her grown son Daniel. He loves his mom and seems to be a decent son, despite her smothering, but when a new girlfriend enters the picture Laura quickly decides that Cherry is nothing but a pretty, little gold-digger and she does not like her.

 

The first half or so of this book is an intense character study of Cherry and Laura. We get to know them, their motives, their desires, their vicious inner thoughts and their incredible flaws. You can see a true mess in the making and it so much fun to read. As things progress, you realize just how far these two women will go to have things go their way. They are both deviously awful humans. One is smothering, selfish, mean-spirited, and more than a little evil. The other is shallow, materialistic, vindictive, and totally evil. Horrid, terrible people and I loved reading about them.

 

Even though there are really no true surprises here and not a lot happens in the first half, the book is incredibly infectious. Once I started reading I just had to keep going to find out what nasty thing was going to be said and done next. When a whopper of a lie is told by one of the women, the book spirals into a pit of doom from that point thereafter and I read it straight through until the end.

 

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley but it was only the first 13 chapters. Why would they do that to anyone?! I ended up getting my copy from my local library but had to wait a few months before my number was called.