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Too Good to Be True by Carola Lovering

Thriller

Too Good to Be True

by Carola Lovering

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Quick take

Unsettling and twisted, this creepy thriller will make you wonder which of its narrators is telling the truth.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Unreliable_Narrator

    Unreliable narrator

  • Illustrated icon, Creepy

    Creepy

  • Illustrated icon, Love_Triangle

    Love triangle

  • Illustrated icon, Graphic_Content

    Graphic violence

Synopsis

Skye Starling is overjoyed when her boyfriend, Burke Michaels, proposes after a whirlwind courtship. Though Skye seems to have the world at her fingertips?she’s smart, beautiful, and from a well-off family?she’s also battled crippling OCD ever since her mother’s death when she was eleven, and her romantic relationships have suffered as a result.

But now Burke?handsome, older, and more emotionally mature than any man she’s met before?says he wants her. Forever. Except, Burke isn’t who he claims to be. And interspersed letters to his therapist reveal the truth: he’s happily married, and using Skye for his own, deceptive ends.

In a third perspective, set thirty years earlier, a scrappy seventeen-year-old named Heather is determined to end things with Burke, a local bad boy, and make a better life for herself in New York City. But can her adolescent love stay firmly in her past?or will he find his way into her future?

On a collision course she doesn’t see coming, Skye throws herself into wedding planning, as Burke’s scheme grows ever more twisted. But of course, even the best laid plans can go astray. And just when you think you know where this story is going, you’ll discover that there’s more than one way to spin the truth.

Content warning

This book contains scenes that depict sexual assault and childhood trauma.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Too Good to Be True.

Too Good to Be True

Chapter One

Skye

MARCH 2019

Something is going on with Burke this morning. I can tell because he asks me three times how I want my eggs.

“Over easy!” I call from the bedroom. It’s how I’ve asked for my eggs every time since we began dating six months ago.

Burke is a morning person and I am not, and I love that he’s gotten in the habit of making me breakfast on weekend mornings while I lounge in bed with a book.

“Over easy, right?” he shouts again from the kitchen.

“Right! Thanks.” I sink back into the pillows, confused. Burke and I have been living together for over two months now. He knows how I like my eggs.

The fear that my forty-six-year-old boyfriend might be developing early-onset Alzheimer’s suddenly seizes every square inch of my brain. I recognize the irrational concern as it formulates, but the compulsion has already taken its unshakable hold, and I can’t lose Burke to Alzheimer’s out of sheer laziness. I climb out of bed and knock on every wooden object in the room eight times: eight knocks for the headboard, bedside tables, both dressers, windowpanes, closet door, baseboard moldings, and the little hand-carved elephant on my dresser. For time-management purposes, I should really avoid buying wooden furniture in the future.

“Two over-easy eggs with an English muffin and extra-crispy bacon for my beautiful girl,” Burke says, entering the bedroom with a tray. “And, of course, coffee.” He looks adorable in sweats and a T-shirt, his dark hair damp from the shower. Affection floods me, and I almost can’t stand how much I love him.

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Why I love it

At the beginning of Too Good to Be True, when Skye’s older (much older!) boyfriend Burke proposes to her, it’s pretty clear he's hiding something from her. But Skye ignores the warning signs because she’s too swept up in the glitter and excitement—celebratory dinners with girlfriends, the diamond-and-sapphire ring on her finger—and, besides, she’s plain old relieved. Before she met Burke, she always had bad romantic luck. And with so many of her friends pairing off, Skye had begun to worry that she might be alone forever.

But maybe Skye shouldn’t be reaching for her happily-ever-after so quickly. When the story switches perspectives, we learn that Burke has been misleading her: he has a whole separate life, where he's married with kids. Why is he lying to Skye? What does he have planned? And when we meet Heather—the smart, ambitious young woman who, thirty years earlier, broke up with Burke in high school—we start to wonder how his past deceptions might be linked to those of the present.

I read this book fast, propelled forward by twist after twist. Skye, Burke, and Heather all have secrets to keep. They're all good at hiding things—and they all have reasons for hiding those things. Just when I thought I had a handle on one of them, a new surprise would shift my perspective. Too Good to Be True doesn't leave you with easy answers, but that's what makes it so much fun. Maybe you would never go as far as Burke goes, but then again ... maybe you would? Crack it open and decide for yourself!

Member ratings (30,205)

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Thriller
View all
The Boyfriend
The Last One at the Wedding
Sleep Tight
First Lie Wins
House of Glass
Middle of the Night
Listen for the Lie
A Talent for Murder
Beautiful Ugly
Someone in the Attic
One Perfect Couple
Like Mother, Like Daughter
Kill for Me, Kill for You
Bad Tourists
Murder Road
Daughter of Mine
The Fury
The Other Mothers
When I’m Dead
The Soulmate
What Lies in the Woods
She Started It
The Only One Left
Dark Corners
Blacktop Wasteland
All the Dangerous Things
The Only Survivors
The Broken Girls
The Family Game
The Push
We Were Never Here
Things We Do in the Dark
The Golden Couple
The Stranger Upstairs
Gone Tonight
Too Good to Be True
The Last Word
You Are Not Alone
Rock Paper Scissors
Not a Happy Family
A Flicker in the Dark
Reckless Girls
The House Across the Lake
The Last Thing He Told Me
The Maidens
Everything We Didn't Say
The Paris Apartment
You're Invited
The Last Party
Dark Places
Pieces of Her
The Wife Between Us
Sharp Objects
None of This Is True
The Silent Patient
The Other Woman
Necessary People
The Family Upstairs
The Night Swim
Girl A
The Hunting Wives
Just Another Missing Person
First Born
The Lies I Tell
Breathless