Review: Reality of Betrayal
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 24, 2013
Long time best friends, Valerie Boss and Raven Singletary, are closer than blood sisters. When Raven reveals that she's engaged to be married, Valerie contemplates who the groom-to-be is. It's not long before she finds out and their sisterhood quickly unravels.Being separated from her best friend, Valerie is semi-depressed. When Stanley invites her over for a card game and dinner, she decides it beats sitting in the house. She finds herself enjoying the evening a little too much. And all of a sudden she sees an opportunity for payback.Appropriately titled, TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY by Marissa Monteilh tests the bonds of friendships, parenting and love. I like the way the story starts and ends. What I don't like is that it seems to lose its sizzle in the middle. The middle of the story didn't feel like the same characters. You thought that you were walking into a grown woman friendship, but then as the pages go and the animosity intensifies, you feel like these women are really girls in high school. Readers get Raven and Valerie's sides of the story told in first person, which stops the story from being as interesting as it could've been. Also there are issues with the editing. There are too many words, wrong words, and wrong tenses.The redeeming factor is that the book discusses diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and transplants. It is through this that the characters evolve and their focus changes to forgiveness. This is my first read by Monteilh. It was interesting enough that I'm content to try another of her books.