Een jonge vrouw die de relatie met haar nieuwe vriend vanwege zijn gedrag heeft verbroken, ontdekt kort daarna dat hij een relatie heeft met haar zusje ( )

Als Miranda van haar werk thuiskomst treft ze haar nieuwe liefde Brendan lezend in haar dagboek aan op de bank. Ze is woest, ze verbreekt de relatie en zet hem de deur uit. Twee weken later spreekt Miranda haar zusje Kerry, die er fantatische uitziet en een nieuwe vriend blijkt te hebben. Hij heeft Brendan..... Wat als een ongemakkelijke situatie begint. wordt al een kwelling - en uiteindelijk zelfs nog angstaanjagender dan Miranda's ergste nachtmerrie.

Although they have recently been concentrating on a series featuring a psychotherapist, the husband and wife writing team known as Nicci French are perhaps best known for their standalone novels of psychological suspense and THE SECRET SMILE was their seventh such release in 2003.

It tells the story of twenty-something Miranda Cotton. While ice-skating one afternoon she meets Brendan Block and the two start seeing each other. But only a couple of weeks into their fledgling relationship Miranda comes home from work one day to find him in her flat. She is unhappy (she hadn’t given him a key) and when she sees him reading her private diary (which he would have had to search for) she breaks off the relationship. Two weeks later her sister invites her out for dinner. Kerry has news. Kerry is in love and wants Miranda to be happy for her. Kerry hopes Miranda will be able to deal with the fact her sister’s new love is Brendan. Brendan quickly makes it clear to Miranda that he is playing some kind of twisted game but to everyone else he is the very definition of charm and no one can understand why Miranda begins behaving oddly and trying to turn people against the delightful Brendan.

For this type of novel to work best the reader has to be invested in the characters to whom awful things are happening. At least enough to want the bad things to stop happening and the nasty person to get their comeuppance. In this case for most of the book I didn’t really care if Brendan managed to turn Miranda into a jibbering basket case. Or worse. That I found Miranda irritating and many of her actions plain stupid wasn’t the biggest issue. The thing that impacted me most was that I never quite believed the entire premise. Don’t get me wrong – I know there are evil bastards like Brendan out there. But Miranda’s family were too quick to side with him. Every member of her family (and her best friend too) took Brendan’s word over Miranda’s from the get go. “Really?” I kept thinking. We’ve had some arguments over they years but I’m confident my brother would still take my word against that of a complete stranger in any scenario I can imagine. As I would his. Even if that stranger was uncommonly charismatic. I suppose the book was trying to create a sense of Miranda against the world but, for me at least, this had the opposite effect of ratcheting up the tension. For this story to work better for me Miranda would have to have been more naturally isolated at the outset, i.e. if she’d never had anyone to turn to for support, or have at least one member of her circle on her side. I think Brendan’s evilness could have continued virtually unchecked in such a scenario but Miranda’s circumstances would have had more ‘truthiness’.

I guess my other issue is that I realised early on that I knew what was going to happen for the whole book. Of course there were individual “bad stuff happens” incidents that I couldn’t have guessed at but the story arc is a very simple one and there were only two possible outcomes. Perhaps if the characters had engaged me more this wouldn’t have been as much of a problem but as it was I really was a bit bored and felt the story dragged. If I were going to recommend a suspense novel with this kind of theme I’d nominate Elizabeth Haynes’ INTO THE DARKEST CORNER instead.

Miranda meets a guy, breaks up with him but he's a artful manipulator and somehow remains in her life. Many reviewers felt her stupid actually I think it is all those who surround her that are idiots and for some reason Miranda knows she can't share details with them because they won't believe her. Why? That's never really explored. Conclusion is a cop out and wraps up too nicely with no action. ( )

A dark novel about obsession and abuse. Miranda meets Brendan, she starts going out with him but after a few weeks she finds him looking through her diary and ends the relationship but he doesn't go away. He is abusive towards Miranda but no one else sees it; they see a charming man who only wants to please and so Miranda starts her battle to save the world from Brendan.
Well put together and entertaining and gripping. ( )