Author: J.P. Delaney
Published: July 28th 2020 by Ballantine Books
Format: Hardcover, 402 pages
Genre: Psychological Thriller
After an achingly slow start, Playing Nice didn’t get interesting until the midway point and will have left most readers wondering what had happened since JP Delaney’s previous books (Believe Me, The Girl Before, and The Perfect Wife) were “unputdownable” from the beginning.
Eternally nice guy Pete Riley and workaholic Maddie Wilson are doing their best to raise their son Theo, who was born premature and who is now displaying challenging tendencies. Tendencies that were problematic enough to have him, as a two-year-old, thrown out of preschool. That’s ok since Pete will sort it all out and get them on the right footing once he figures out why the people that were watching him from across the road at his son’s school are now on his doorstep with a fantastical tale of child swapping and lawsuits.
Pete and Maddie attempt an amicable solution with Miles Lambert – this is where the book unravels for me. Who would take a stranger’s word without researching on their own? Yet, I blindly follow along in hopes that Pete and Maggie will wake up and take the lead when a stranger is trying to lay claim to their child. But at the same time, wondering why they would show so little interest in another child that could be theirs. But struggle on I do, as I am talking to the book that I am reading.
J P Delaney has the reader bouncing all over the place as he throws each possible scenario against the wall in hopes that the reader will willingly go along as each possibility gets darker and dirtier until Pete and Maggie have no other option.
Eternally nice guy Pete Riley and workaholic Maddie Wilson are doing their best to raise their son Theo, who was born premature and who is now displaying challenging tendencies. Tendencies that were problematic enough to have him, as a two-year-old, thrown out of preschool. That’s ok since Pete will sort it all out and get them on the right footing once he figures out why the people that were watching him from across the road at his son’s school are now on his doorstep with a fantastical tale of child swapping and lawsuits.
Pete and Maddie attempt an amicable solution with Miles Lambert – this is where the book unravels for me. Who would take a stranger’s word without researching on their own? Yet, I blindly follow along in hopes that Pete and Maggie will wake up and take the lead when a stranger is trying to lay claim to their child. But at the same time, wondering why they would show so little interest in another child that could be theirs. But struggle on I do, as I am talking to the book that I am reading.
J P Delaney has the reader bouncing all over the place as he throws each possible scenario against the wall in hopes that the reader will willingly go along as each possibility gets darker and dirtier until Pete and Maggie have no other option.
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