One of the fastest page turning novels I've read recently. It pulls you in from page one and never let's up.. It's romantic, horrific and just too darn good to put down. Really the question to ask is What would I do in the beginning and the end. Terrific.

A really great read. I was fortunate to read this book prior to it's release and I loved it. A really unusual premise and interesting characters, I was hooked throughout, never knowing who to trust and both scared, intrigued and enthralled by 'The Pact' in equal measures.
Having finished it I'm mainly just grateful this is a work of fiction......it is.... isn't it?........
Read it!

I think the ideas & themes in this book will stay with me for a long time (perhaps because I'm only relatively recently married?) and for that reason I'm giving it a high rating.

It wasn't always the most well written of books & at times, you do have to suspend belief (a lawyer not reading a contract before signing?), but the story of this pro-marriage cult & a man's introspective thoughts on his reasons for initially pursuing a marriage, touched a nerve with me!

I found this book creepy. I enjoy books where a regular person loses all control of their lives after a couple of badly thought out decisions. They draw me in asking 'but what would I do in that situation'?!

The reveal of Orla's rational for creating the 'cult' was not well enough explained & expanded on for me. However there were several other reveals that were unexpected, which doesn't happen often.

Who wouldn't accept the offer of friendly support to ensure their marriage is strong & lasts forever?!

Great concept, went slightly off the rails at times, but creepy & thought provoking throughout.

This is my first book by this author I will be checking out her other books.
The Pact!!! what is it ? is it a club, a cult, or a group?
This book was good I enjoyed it and it was well written the Author takes you on a mysterious ride till the end. I did find it a bit slow to start with but once it got going I really enjoyed the book.
The characters are great well written. And will have you turning the pages to find out what is going to happen.
Just married Alice and Jake receive a wedding gift from one of Alice’s clients - an invite to join a group known only as The Pact. The pact is a very mysterious group and some of the stuff that goes on there is mad.. I am not going say much don’t want to spoil it but give this book a try it is worth the read.

A truly chilling & creepy thriller. A story of Alice and Jake and what happens after they say "I do". Will keep you gripped until the end!

While this started off as a very good book that kept my interest it really spun off in the last third. It seems to be a theme recently that well written books with compelling plots can't see it through to the end.

This book is definitely a page turner. I finished in abou 3 days. You didn't know what would happen next.

After Jake and Alice get married they join The Pact. It's much like a cult and there is no escaping. They seem to have eyes everywhere. There are plenty of twists and the punishments grow more severe each time. They make a mistake. Who can be trusted? Not who you think. Will they even survive? But it's not just a Thriller it's a love story, and Jake really loves Alice and as the book progresses you find that Alice is just as committed to their marriage and that turns out to be really important to their survival as The Pact is all about having a good marriage. I throughly enjoyed the book and loved the ending!!

I didn't enjoy reading this book to be honest, but I persevered to the end.

The plot was sinisterly good, most of the characters were well-drawn, but for me, the whole thing was too far-fetched to be believable. So much so that I became annoyed with some of the characters!

Thanks anyway to the publishers and Net Galley for allowing me to read an advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

What can i say! This book kept me enthralled till the very end. You are kept on the edge of your seat wondering just how sinister things are going to get! An amazing summer read that on a serious note did make me think about marriage and all it stands for.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this book, I have to be brutally honest it just wasn't for me. I think it was a bit far fetched and it would nearly put me off getting married at all. I didn't think too much of the storyline.

This book had me in two minds hence the 3 stars I neither loved it or hated it. Parts of it I enjoyed the others annoyed me. I also found the theories on marriage thrown in a bit boring so skipped them. I was glad of the ending as I found the premise a bit unbelievable at times although I do know cults exist.

Sometimes you read a book which, despite obvious good qualities, doesn't quite work. For me, this is one of those books. But maybe it's just me. Luckily, despite taking the shine off of the whole experience, there's still something there.

The best thing there is the basic concept. It's simple, fresh, clever, and it's hard not to get pulled along wondering just how it will all play out. The set-up is pretty Hollywood - successful couple gets married and invited into a socially elite group that have a manual on how to nurture a successful marriage. Also in best Hollywood style, the more they learn about this secretive group the darker things become.

Yet there's more to the whole thing than that.

The Manual prompts simple things that many married couples would no doubt appreciate. Regular gifts and trips away for example. You could almost lift parts of this as a Guide To Marriage in a glossy magazine they sound so wonderful. Jake and Alice serve as a reminder that ideals clash with reality at times though. Those magazine articles get read in bed wistfully before sleepily turning off the lights and making mental notes of what chores need doing before you can even consider gift shopping and trip planning. Which is where the edge comes in. The Pact is about rules, and rules are easily broken. And when rules get broken there are usually repercussions. The Marriage Pact delivers on the rituals of devotion, of giving yourself to your partner.

As I said earlier, this angle gives the author room to explore so many avenues that even as the story starts to blossom around a third of the way in it's hard to plot what's yet to come, and does so right to the end. It's one of those stories that you'll have a dozen theories on how it will unfold, and you were right at one point, but who knows how long before you changed your mind.

So if the story is good, where do things go wrong? It's not Jake or Alice. They're good protagonists. It would've been easy to make them just a little too perfect, but from the start they're enjoyably normal. That slight lack of sheen gives them an easy distance from the perfect crowd in The Pact. It all fits in nicely with the overall plot.

What ultimately took the edge off for me though were some (fairly infrequent and random) phases of clumsiness. Out of character behaviours and mistakes, especially when concentrated in a small section, jarred. At times it feels as if the author is conflicted. Character traits that are presumably intended to be affectionate ticks slowly become less logical as they're forced to fit in with the rest of the story. Characters lift the plot onto a new course with a small change in mood or tone that seems unnecessary; the plot has enough flow to glide there itself and doesn't need forced help like that.

In truth these niggles are small. There remains a good story with good characters. I just couldn't help feeling that a little more surety from the author would've elevated it all into something special, and therefore good just doesn't feel enough anymore. It is good, but it could've been great.

The blurb to this book was very intriguing. I couldn’t wait to see where the author would take this. Jake and Alice are just married when they are invited to join a secret group called ‘The Pact’ that promises to ensure that their marriage will never fail. Like every good thriller should, it jumps in right at the beginning of the action and you are hooked from beginning to end. The writing is so vivid that you feel that you are taking this journey with the newly wed couple.

I felt the choice of narrating from Jake’s point of view was wise as it makes Alice’s character more mysterious and complex. I think it would have been hard to have read this from Alice’s perspective as she is such a mercurial character. At times I didn’t like Jake’s character as he seemed quite conflicted in himself so it was hard to get a grasp on what he was ‘about’ so to speak. But then no one is straight forward in real life I suppose!

The construction of The Pact and its laws were fascinating. If you are married or have an interest in the philosophy of marriage then the internal debate in the book is interesting and thought-provoking. It questions what it takes to make a marriage work and how marriage as a concept has changed through time. I liked the discussion about this throughout the book and some of the thoughts that Jake has really resonated with me.

The intensity in this book steadily rises as the couple begins to see the darker side of The Pact as they are unable to keep to it’s multifaceted and extensive rules. These chapters flew by for me as I raced through the awful scenes that the couple had to endure. I have to admit that I did feel that there was a big build up in this book and that the final scenes lacked the emotion and excitement that the book seemed to be leading us towards.

Overall, this was a unique and slightly crazy read that I really enjoyed. I would definitely recommend this to people that enjoy a unique thriller.

The Pact will be published on 27th July 2017. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Jake is a therapist and Alice is a lawyer and she has 2 extra guests for their wedding who are the biggest clients her company have. They send a wedding gift but it isn't until after the wedding and a great wedding it is, they discover more about what the gift is. What follows is a breath taking book you will not want to put down. As newly wedded it is thought that on top of looking after troubled teenagers Jake should give marriage counselling which makes this book so very different from any thriller I have known and I loved it.
I have been given a free copy of this book from NetGalley in return for a honest review,

A story of a modern-day 'cult of marriage': so weird, so freakish, so unbelievable - and yet this book held me gripped right through to the end. I'd recommend avoiding reviews that retell the plot till after you've read the book - the publisher's blurb tells you all you need to know to get going. Also be aware that the start is a little slow with some awkward writing, but it all settles down rapidly.

One of the things I liked about this is the way it muddles genres: it contains bits of chick-lit, bits of domestic noir, some thriller-ish elements (not least some scenes of acute violence and distress) but also sits alongside a range of books such as The Stepford Wives (though here the rules are extended to men), Doctor Faustus (though the contract is not with a devil), 1984 for Doublespeak, and even Paradise Lost which contains a model for the ending.

It's not often that I find myself wrong-footed by a novel's ending but this one managed it with aplomb! So one of those rare novels that is both a commercial page-turner 'beach read' and also something altogether cleverer, more thoughtful and more intelligent.

I remain quite undecided about this book. At its centre it is an interesting study on marriage, but I still remain unsure of the reasons why the Pact felt it was so important to prevent divorce and discourage procreation.
I also felt parts of the novel read like a textbook with "factoids" regarding marriage, case studies from Jake's practice and discussion of research on psychological experiments.

Thank you to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for my ARC of this novel.

I was seriously intrigued by the premise of this novel. Alice and Jake are in a pretty strong relationship so when a wedding guest gifts them the option to join The Pact a special and exclusive group for married couples who want to work to ensure that their marriage lasts forever.

Some of the rules are really great and make complete sense. Answer your spouse when they call, buy them a little gift each a month, take a trip somewhere every quarter. Great right?

Alice and Jake are initially seduced by the glamourous parties and the idea of working together to ensure their marriage goes through both the good and bad times. But then they find out that not only do they have to keep The Pact a secret, they have to abide by the rules or suffer the consequences. Consequences which are frankly shocking.

Jake is the narrator of the story and he's a really stand up guy. He's strong and confident and at least tried to resist the control that The Pact held over them. Alice not so much, to be honest she's a bit aggravating and throughout a lot of the novel I felt like she didn't deserve Jake!

The novel is so well written, and the plot is so good that it makes it unputdownable. The things that happen to the characters have you literally hanging on to your seat for dear life as you wonder what's going to happen next!!

I'm glad the Plot lived up to my expectations and formed not only a great book but a truly original idea and you don't get many of those anymore!

I would like to thank Michael Joseph and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read ‘The Marriage Pact’ by Michelle Richmond, in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.
Alice and Jake are about to get married and Alice gives a wedding invitation to business acquaintance Liam Finnegan and his wife Fiona who send the newlyweds a package, a box containing two extremely expensive-looking pens. It isn’t until they open the box that they are introduced to ‘The Pact’, a cult that encourages marriages to last forever and once a member won’t let anyone leave – alive that is!!! For Alice and Jake, their married life together turns into the worst nightmare they could imagine.
‘The Marriage Pact’ is a seriously scary thriller, the plot is taut, pacy and absorbing. I was up half the night unable to put the book down as I needed to know what was going to happen next. This is a novel I can thoroughly recommend!