Great book! The story was really good. Fast paced and interesting and the ending was absolutely perfect.
Highly recommended

Thank you to NetGalley and Boldwood Books for providing this book, with my honest review below.

The Mistress was a fantastic thriller, really more like domestic suspense and two thrillers in one. Valerie Keogh has done a great job with her setting of suburbia and building out characters that a reader has enough information about to feel their bad and good, as one should for most flawed people. While this is about a mistress, Hannah, the wife, Susan, and the husband, Mark, it’s becomes a richer story due to the supporting cast of characters and the myriad of mysteries.

Susan is left at home with a newly departed son, Drew, she doted on far too much. Her husband Mark begins to pull away and suspecting he is having an affair she begins investigating. Hannah is on the scene from the jump but she takes you in, helping understand her current circumstances that led to college sweetheart Mark as well as her checkered past. There are several twists at the end was completely out of nowhere (in a really quite good way), and the events leading up to them keep this from being a character study but a true thriller.

Highly recommended for fans of thrillers and mysteries and good old fashioned suspense.

Wow what a crazy character!! Lol Hannah Parker is the kind of woman who always gets what she wants!! when her current husband finds out she's Been lying to him, he beats her so bad she's knocked out for a long time finally awake she goes looking for her crazy hubby and funds him almost unconscious on the kitchen floor!! The fool went and had a stroke! She vows to get her revenge on him! She finds an old picture of one of her many exes and thinks its a sign to get her first true love! Who cares that he's married with a child?! But his wife is almost crazier than Hannah!! This book was a wild ride!! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one! I definitely recommend reading it! Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for sharing this book with me!

Publication date: March 25th, 2024
Page count: 289
Genre: domestic thriller
Setting: England

Hannah uses men for sex and money. Hannah married Ivan- an older, rich men that turned out to be abusive. In college she did have a romantic, “normal “ relationship for 6 months with Mark, that she ended when Mark went abroad because she did not want to be vulnerable, even though Mark wanted to marry her. After Ivan has a stroke, Hannah goes to find Mark, who is now married to Susan.

This is an easy read. It was mostly the story of an affair and woman working through their issues than an unfolding mystery. The action picks up at the end, but not completely satisfying.


Thank you to author, publisher, NetGalley for advanced copy. This is an honest voluntary review.

Valerie Keogh, The Mistress, Boldwood Books, March 2024.

Thank you, NetGalley, for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.

Valerie Keogh’s The Mistress brings together a couple whose marriage has, without their conscious recognition, become stale and the husband’s former lover who regrets having left him. The two women at the centre of the struggle for Mark have pasts that have undermined their capacity to become fully functioning adults and are also dealing with current catastrophes. The brutal attack on Hannah by her husband introduces the novel; in contrast, Susan’s despair over the departure of her son to what she sees as a far-flung university rather than one of those close by which she would prefer is a minor affair. However, for Susan it, and her suspicions about Mark, are an imperative which forces her to act out of character. In comparison, Hannah’s relationship with her husband, and her determination to wrest Mark from Susan which forms the other thread in the novel and is very much in character.

Keogh’s adroit development of these themes together with undertones of sympathy for the women’s pasts, is clever. Both women are flawed, both have pasts that have created those flaws, and their actions are questionable, although ultimately plausible. Also flawed are the men in the novel, Mark the errant husband; Ivan the bullying husband; and Andrew the cossetted son. Although Ivan is introduced as a tyrant, Mark and Andrew’s shortcomings become apparent more slowly than those of the women. This is also clever writing. Susan, the woman responsible for hiding the flaws of the men in her family, gradually acknowledges that her desire for the family to remain as it has for years is destructive for her and will continue to be unless she changes herself and her circumstances.

The damage done to both Susan and Hannah from their past and present and their behaviour arising for their pasts is plausible. So too is the way in which both women realise how they have been deceived. Less satisfying is the ending of the novel, but perhaps this is the only way in which Hannah and Susan’s problems could be resolved. Nevertheless, The Mistress is a good read, in keeping with Keogh’s previous successful work.

I was invited to read this book.. and thanks to netgalley for it.
It was a twisted tale that pulls the reader in
Would recommend to others

My goodness what a twisted tale! This is my.forst read by Valerie Keogh but it won't be my last. From the first chapter I was pulled in and the chokehold kept me hanging on until the end. What an ending it was! Thank you for the opportunity to read this ARC.

I couldn’t really get into this. The cover drew me in. The beginning had my attention but then it quickly faded. Just a book about two women fighting over one man. Didn’t really care for the characters. Just ok.

Hannah Parker will do anything to get what she wants... A thrilling read that keeps you turning the pages, recommended!

Great page turner. Short, fast paced chapters with enough intrigue and twists to keep the reader guessing. Although not my favourite of Valerie Keogh’s books, it was still a one day read for me. I like how she writes. I look forward to her next one.
Thank You to NetGalley and to Boldwood Books for the invitation to read an ARC of The Mistress.

Thanks to NetGalley and Boldwood Books for this Advanced Reader’s Copy of The Mistress by Valerie Keogh due to be published March 25, 2024.
After Hannah Parker’s husband finds out she’s been lying to him, she leaves – wondering who she can con next to give her the life she thinks she deserves. She stumbles upon a picture of her old flame, Mark, that she brushed off twenty years ago. So what if he’s married to Susan and has a child – Hannah is still going to see if she can get him back. Hannah just has to remember her three simple rules about lying – keeping the lie simple, remembering which ones you’ve told, and to whom.
Hannah is a hard character to like – she is conniving, manipulative, deceiving, cunning, scheming (shall I go on?) and other words I don’t think I can put in an online review!
I read this in a few hours – I couldn’t wait to see if Hannah got what she wanted or if someone would turn the tables on her, and I was not disappointed!
It had me hooked from the first chapter and was full of drama, love, and hate.
This was a new author to me, but I see she has many other books already published, so I will definitely read more of Valerie Keogh’s books!
#NetGalley #ValerieKeogh #BoldwoodBooks #TheMistress

A really good thriller from one of my favourite author’s. Valerie Keogh writes intelligent and well thought out thrillers and this was another great one, lots of twists and turns, I did wonder how it would pan out.

This was an OK book for me. Nothing really special or unique about the characters but the execution made up for the unoriginal plot.

Thrilling and full of emotions. This is a battle between two women who knows what they want and who they want.

Thanks Netgalley and Boldwood Books for the ARC!

Drawn in from first pages full of twists and turns an author I will be following.Thanks boldwood books for my copy.#netgalley #boldwodbooks

Thank you Boldwood Books and NetGalley for an early copy of The Mistress. This was a good one! It kept me wanting to read more and more. It did seem to rain every time at Ivan’s place. When Ethan did give the report, I was shocked. I liked Susan, I’m glad she dug deeper and where her life seemed to be going in the end. The cover caught my eye. Fast paced which I like.

Hannah married an old man for his money. She has always believed she can get any man she wants. Her husband, Ivan, wants a child and Hannah doesn't. He beats her viciously and she knows that she has to get out of this marriage.
Mark is an old flame of Hannah's from university. He is a goodlooking but unambitious and weak man. His wife Susan has pushed him to the success he now enjoys.
She adores him, but when he hooks up with Hannah, she knows she has to fight for her man.

I love Valerie Keogh's books! And this one was no exception. It was fast paced, and truly unputdownable. None of the characters were really likeable, and I did not like Susan until the end of the book. She showed such strength, and I admire her for it.

However, the ending was a disappointment for me. I wish Hannah's mother's character had been developed and there was an explanation as to why she hated her daughter so much.

Thanks to Netgalley and Boldwood Books for the opportunity to read this book.

Oh my, Hannah the beautiful, Susan the dutiful, and Mark wanted by both. Hannah's problems started at age ten when her beloved father left, another woman, or just a more exciting life, it started a vicious cycle for Hannah, of rich older men in exchange for sex and presents of money, after all, it got her through college. Susan picked up the pieces after Hannah ditched a college-age Mark, he was too young, and he made the mistake of falling in love with Hannah. Susan's only child, Drew, has left for College, and she has a severe case of empty nest syndrome, instead of feeling sympathetic, Mark is captured by Hannah, who has decided Mark is just what she has been missing. Given the instability of all three people involved, you can feel the danger building, it takes many chapters, but it comes, in all of its horror!
I recommend.
Thank you,
carolintallahassee

This novel gives new meaning to the term "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned (or spurned)" as both Hannah and Susan have reason to worry about their respective husbands! Beautiful Hannah marries 70-year-old Ivan who takes his anger out on her physically; Susan finds a receipt in Mark's pocket that suggests he's been unfaithful. What follows is a nail-biting thriller that involves several family members, secrets, lies, and a PI who is shady as well. It will have you cheering for women everywhere who feel the need to discover the truth about cheating men!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

Fast paced right to the last chapter and then what I felt was an abrupt ending and not one I was expecting. Having said that I had to keep reading it until I was finished.

The Mistress is Valerie Keogh’s latest fast paced thriller that I could not put down. The ending was great. A few twists thrown in that she loves to do makes this a fantastic read! Looking forward to more by this great author! Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this early release in exchange for my honest review. To be published March 25, 2024.