TUESDAY EXCERPTS: “GOODNIGHT BEAUTIFUL”

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events: First Chapter/Intros, now hosted by  Socrates Book Reviews; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by The Purple Booker.

Today’s feature is a new book:  Goodnight Beautiful, by Aimee Molloy

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Intro:  (Prologue, October 20)

I look up as a man with ruddy cheeks and a crew cut walks into the restaurant, shaking rain from his baseball cap.  “Hey, sweetheart,” he calls to the pink-haired girl mixing drinks behind the bar.  “Any chance you can hang this in the window?”

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Teaser Tuesdays:  They share a hearty chuckle, and I notice how relaxed he sounds.  In fact, I’d say he’s more relaxed than he’s been in days. (p. 62).

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Synopsis:  A handsome psychotherapist. His lonely wife. And in his home office ceiling, a vent …

You’d listen too, wouldn’t you? (You know you would.)

Newlyweds Sam Statler and Annie Potter are head over heels, and excited to say good-bye to New York City and start a life together in Sam’s sleepy hometown upstate. Or, it turns out, a life where Annie spends most of her time alone while Sam, her therapist husband, works long hours in his downstairs office, tending to the egos of his (mostly female) clientele. Little does Sam know that through a vent in his ceiling, every word of his sessions can be heard from the room upstairs. The pharmacist’s wife, contemplating a divorce. The well-known painter whose boyfriend doesn’t satisfy her in bed. Who could resist listening? Everything is fine until the French girl in the green mini Cooper shows up, and Sam decides to go to work and not come home, throwing a wrench into Sam and Annie’s happily ever after. 

Showcasing Molloy’s deft ability to subvert norms and culminating in the kind of stunning twist that is becoming her trademark, Goodnight Beautiful is a thrilling tale of domestic suspense that not only questions assumptions but defies expectations.

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Would you keep reading?

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