Synopsis:
“You know that feeling? When you want something so badly, you almost feel you’d kill for it?”
Be careful what you wish for . . .
Kat and her husband Nick have tried everything to become parents, and are on the point of giving up. Then a chance encounter with Kat’s childhood friend, Lisa, gives Kat and Nick one last chance to achieve their dream.
But Kat and Lisa’s history is full of dark secrets.
And there is more to Lisa than meets the eye.
As dangerous cracks start to appear in Kat’s perfect picture of happily-ever-after, she realises that she must face her fear of the past to save her family . . .
Review:
Author Louise Jensen is the bestselling author of psychological thrillers The Sister, The Gift, The Date, and The Family.
Her latest thriller, The Surrogate, focuses on Kat, who desperately wants to be a mother. But she and her husband, Nick, have tried unsuccessfully to become parents. Things have reached the point where Nick is ready to abandon their dream of having a child of their own. Then Kat encounters her best friend from childhood, Lisa. The meeting appears to be happenstance. But is it? Despite their shared history that left the two of them estranged for many years, Lisa offers to serve as a surrogate for Kat and Nick.
At the outset, readers must suspend disbelief in order to accept that Lisa and Kat would enter into such an arrangement sans reconciliation considering the dark history they share. After all, whatever happened long ago pulled them apart for many years and, under normal circumstances, it is unbelievable that the two would not just suddenly rekindle a friendship. Much less enter into a surrogacy agreement without resolving the issues that torpedoed their close friendship. However, there is nothing normal about the characters author Louise Jensen has created or the world they inhabit.
Jensen navigates readers through jaw-dropping revelations about the characters’ pasts, their motivations, and what is really happening as opposed to what appears to be occurring. Every character is far more complex and, in some instances, sinister than they seem. And as Kat realizes that Lisa has misrepresented her current circumstances, actions, and motivations, she is forced to finally confront her fears about past events and how those fears hold the power to impact her future. She muses, “You know that feeling? When you want something so badly, you almost feel you’d kill for it?” Lisa tells her several times, “We always get what we deserve.”
Jensen demonstrates through fast-paced plot twists and unpredictable character developments that nothing has occurred randomly. The quest to learn whether all of Jensen’s characters indeed get what they deserve compels readers to accept Jensen’s wild premise and keep reading.
The Surrogate is thoroughly escapist and very intriguing entertainment.
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