Behind Closed Doors by B. A. Paris

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A solid 4/5. On a good day, I might even give this 4.5/5. This was a PAGE-TURNER! With a title like this, it's not hard to figure out the perfect couple isn't what it appears to be, but I was glued to the page, dying to figure out what they are like, behind closed doors!! When that mystery is presented, I was on the edge of my seat to learn how Grace was going to get out of the situation. The ending is sweet and perfect.


SPOILER ALERT!

Behind Closed Doors tells the story of husband and wife, Jack and Grace. Jack is a successful lawyer who represents battered wives in divorce cases. Not only is he handsome (better looking than George Clooney), wealthy, and kind, he's also never lost a single case. Grace met him at a park - when Grace was with her sister Millie who suffers from Down Syndrome. Instead of making fun of her like the others, Jack took Millie's hand to dance with her in the park, which made Grace instantly fall in love. They get married, and things quickly change. Even at the wedding, when Jack holds Millie's hand to climb up the stairs to the registration, Millie falls and breaks her leg, and we later find out Jack had pushed her. After the honeymoon, Jack presents their new house to Grace - a beautiful house with a garden and terrace, but there's also a secret room in the basement that won't unlock from the inside. By now, Grace has realized she's married to a sociopath and Jack has told her he only enjoys the purest form of fear, which is why he chose Grace - he knows he can inflict fear in Millie. Grace makes many plans to escape, but is caught again and again, with increasing punishments. All while their friends have no idea what's going on, because everything seems perfect from the outside world. At one point, Jack even got Grace a puppy, only to let the puppy die of dehydration. Grace knows Jack must die. The deadline's coming up - Millie is about to graduate and Jack is arranging for Millie to live in their house. When visiting Millie at her boarding school one day, she secretly passed Grace her collection of sleeping pills - she's been saving them everyday instead of taking them because she wants Grace to use them to kill Jack. She's been reading Agatha Christie novels and learned it from there. Grace eventually works up the courage and drugs Jack with it by sharing a whiskey drink with him and pouring it into his whiskey. Grace timed it perfectly - he had just lost his first case and they were supposed to go to Thailand together. Grace tells their friend Esther that she has to go to Thailand first while he works on some paperwork and joins her later. Esther takes her to the airport. Grace makes her daily calls to Jack, acting as a concerned wife. Eventually calling his work and friends too. When no one has heard from him after 4 days, Grace contacts the cops. Cops go to the house and finds Jack's body. Grace acts like the grieving widow. Esther meets up with her and tells her the cops said Jack's cause of death was dehydration - he didn't take enough sleeping pills but he couldn't get out of the locked room to retrieve water, so he died a slow painful death that took 4 days. She also tells Grace what to say to the cops to take suspicions away from herself and fed her some lies that they would both say to cement her innocence. Grace is grateful and curious how Esther knows. Esther tells her because Jack mentioned two separate times that Millie's new room is painted red. Esther knew Millie's favorite color is yellow when she was at Millie's birthday party.

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