The Couple in the Photo

July 1, 2023

Author of the LJ-starred The Neighbor Downstairs, Cooper introduces us to two couples, Lucy and Adam and their best friends, Cora and Scott. Spotting Scott with a mysterious woman in a colleague's vacation photos, Lucy fears he's cheating on Cora and is even more worried to learn that the woman has vanished. Then she begins unearthing secrets about both her friends and her husband that make her wonder what's really going on. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 30, 2023
This dull domestic thriller from Cooper (The Other Guest) sees a woman threatening the stability of her long-term friend group when she suspects one of its members of infidelity. Lucy, a British schoolteacher, adores photography, so she happily seizes the opportunity at a work party to view images from her colleague Ruth’s honeymoon in the Maldives. When Lucy sees a snapshot of a grinning couple whom Ruth identifies as Jason and Anna, Lucy knows the man’s real name is actually Scott. He’s one of her best friends from university—and his companion in the photo is definitely not his wife, Cora. Lucy is torn about whether to tell Cora, but her husband tries to persuade her that she’s mistaken, since Scott was supposedly in Japan at the time of Ruth’s honeymoon. Soon, however, Lucy finds out that the woman in the photo has disappeared, and her worries deepen. Cooper’s melodramatic prose (when Lucy first sees the photo, she “didn’t know it would change her life, would be the difference between seeing and not seeing, knowing and not knowing”) and thin characterizations do little to animate the familiar plot. This falls flat.

November 1, 2023
When Lucy looks at photos of her colleague's honeymoon in the Maldives, she's shocked to notice the husband of one of her best friends, arms entwined with an unknown woman. Over the last 15 years, Lucy has created a perfect life for herself in Leicester, England. A teaching job at a local school; a husband, Adam, whom she loves; two children, Fran and Tilly, who couldn't make her happier; and family friends who are their match: Cora, Scott, Ivy, and Joe. Cora, Scott, and Adam were all housemates at university, and Ivy and Joe arrived around the same time as Lucy's own children. The families are inseparable, the children friends, and impromptu barbecues and midweek dinners have evolved into a jointly purchased seaside cottage in Norfolk, which the adults are renovating on the weekends. It is this idyllic life and family network that Lucy feels is threatened by clear evidence that Scott is having an affair. Why else would he be in the Maldives rather than in Japan on a business trip as he claimed? Adam tells her to leave it alone, but she keeps digging, especially when the woman in the picture turns out to be Juliet Noor, a journalist-turned-novelist who goes missing on the island where she was writing, eventually turning up dead. While the novel starts with what appears to be a typical obsessive-wife-won't-stop-digging-even-though-her-husband-tells-her-to-stop storyline that feels a little worn, it unexpectedly unfolds into far, far more as Lucy races to discover who has killed Juliet--and just how many people in her close circle are involved. A clever plot, richly characterized, that explores how choices can cascade to unravel a seemingly happy life.

COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.