A Look at Keep Your Friends Close
© Boldwood Books
Keep Your Friends Close, by Joanne Ryan, is a new psychological thriller that will keep you guessing until the end of the story. The basic premise is Mia, our narrator, killed her boyfriend in a semi-violent altercation. At least, she thought she killed him because suddenly he started appearing in random places. Is he dead and haunting her, or, is he still alive and out for revenge? Either way, things do not bode well for Mia.
As the narrative unfolds, we learn that Mia lives with her childhood friend, Carrie, in a flat in one of the better neighborhoods in London. While Mia inherited a substantial fortune, Carrie comes from a working-class background and constantly resents Mia’s wealth. We discover when Mia shoots her boyfriend, Marco, it is Carrie whom she calls for help. It seems that Carrie handled getting rid of the body and covering up Mia’s crime. [This is not a spoiler, we find this out at the beginning of the novel and it is the premise.]
Fast forward to Mia’s life which seems a bit, well, meaningless. She has a job as an assistant in an art gallery but doesn’t enjoy it. She starts sleeping with the owner, her boss, and she doesn’t care if she gets fired or needs to quit because she has enough money to fix any situation. Conversely, Carrie is constantly gone, working all hours in her accounting job, scrimping and saving, and if we are going to be honest, freeloading off Mia. She doesn’t pay rent.
Mia starts to have blackouts, panic attacks, and other disturbing mental episodes in her life. She doesn’t understand what is happening and once she finds out, let’s say, she rises to the occasion. She doesn’t know who her friends are and most definitely does not know who her enemies are. She doesn’t seem to have a great grip on reality as we move through her life.
The book, most interesting, is a condemnation of the evils of money—earned or unearned. It doesn’t matter if it is about greed by people who have less money, or an ungrateful attitude by the recipients of inherited wealth. Either situation can bring ruin to anyone, and in this book, there are a lot of lessons never learned. Just a note, some psychological thrillers end by wrapping the events up nicely and restoring order to the world. This isn’t one of them. Reader be warned.
Thank you Boldwood Books and NetGalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.