Rating: 3 out of 5⭐️
Title: The Imposter
Author: Marin Montgomery
Expected Publication Date: March 9, 2021 (Thomas & Mercer)
Pages: 431 (ARC eBook)
Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Mystery, Suspense
CW: Violence, Trauma, Suicide, Alcoholism, Brief Sexuality, Assault, Mental Illness
Link Here

Side Note: I received an Advanced Readers Copy of The Imposter by the author through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This title will be released on March 9th 2021.

I’m finally catching up on my ARCs this week! Specifically, Marin Montgomery’s new suspense thriller, The Imposter. Sadly, this one has been sitting in my TBR stack since December. But on the bright side, this review comes at a good time since this book comes out soon, March 9th to be exact. I was excited when the author reached out, and asked me to read it. This is the first book I have read by Montgomery. And she also lives in my hometown of Phoenix, AZ so it is definitely a huge plus to be reading a book by a local author. The plot sounded suspenseful, and I was definitely intrigued. Despite this book falling off my radar, I made an effort to pick it up back up, and I’m glad I did.

The Imposter centers around mother and daughter, Deborah and Sibley Sawyer. Deborah is a middle-aged and troubled single widow living on her family’s farm in a small town in the Midwest, and Sibley is an alcoholic and successful divorce lawyer in Arizona who lives with her husband, Holden, a college professor who is on his last nerve with Sibley. Deborah and Sibley had a falling out and had not spoken for many years, until Sibley shows up on Deborah’s doorstep on the run from her crumbling life looking to make amends. As Sibley reconnects with familiar faces in her home town and truths are revealed, both characters have to come to terms with their own secrets that have stayed buried in their small town. Under suspicious circumstances, the two women also question their reality when strange events begin to occur. But is it too late for their relationship and themselves to be repaired, and the better question is, who can be trusted?

The aspects I liked about this book was that the plot and story were full of suspense, and no parts of this book dropped or ever felt boring. Montgomery does a wonderful job keeping the story going from start to finish. Yet the pacing reminded me of watching a TV drama or something similar. The writing, for being super cheesy, was communicated well. And the plot was carried through the main two character’s inner struggles. The author I can best compare her to is Shari Lapena. But the aspects I was not a fan of was that the characters felt unreliable, and frankly I was tired of some of the side characters pretty quick. Without giving too much away, the main two characters were not trustworthy to the reader at any point in the book. Maybe that was partially the point, but there were hardly any directions toward the truth besides of course how the book rounded out in the end. The ending seemed to fall together without much of a clever set-up, and relied completely on the suspense. Plus I found a few parts of the plot and character’s engagements with each other to be far stretched and choppy. But for how messy it all seemed at times, this book had an interesting dialogue about relationships and second chances.

Regardless, this book was definitely entertaining and engaging. Literally, the story was entirely growing suspense from start to finish. Why should you read this book? If you enjoy suspense thrillers centering on estranged familial relationships and reading about two women seemingly going insane under the same roof, this is the book for you. This is a book I will not be forgetting any time soon.

I give this one a 3 out of 5!

_Elizabeth

---

How do I rate the books I write about? If you’re wondering, click here.