A Simple Favor

Bell, Darcy. A Simple Favor. New York: Harper, 2017. Print. (298 pages)

First sentence: “My mother used to say: Everyone has secrets.”

Plot/ Premise: Stephanie is a blogger who befriends Emily, who has a very important job in the fashion industry and commutes to Manhattan for work daily. The two meet because their sons are best friends and want to have a play date. This, of course allows, the two moms to get to know one another when the boys want to get together and play. Well, it allows Emily to get to know Stephanie and Stephanie learns only what Emily wants her to, whether it’s the truth or a lie. When Emily goes missing Stephanie realizes that she might not have known her best friend as well as she thought she did.

My thoughts: Even if you have seen the movie you should still read this book. The two are very different. The movie takes more of a comical spin on the book, while the book has a darker side to it. The book reminded me more of Gone Girl (which is also a great book one should add to their reading list). I liked the format of this book. It was really easy to read with some chapters being posts on Stephanie’s blog and the others are from the point of view of Stephanie, Emily and Sean, Emily’s husband. I really enjoyed this book and there is so much more detail and explanation of events in the book than the movie (as there always is). I liked all of the characters in this book and could not put it down because I wanted to know all of their secrets and what was going to happen next.