To their friends, Jack and Grace seem like the perfect married couple. He's a lawyer known for defending battered women, and they have a beautiful home where they throw elegant parties, with Grace as the consummate hostess, Jack always by her side.
But is Jack too attentive? He accompanies Grace everywhere, and she doesn't have a cell phone or her own e-mail account, only a shared one with her husband. Grace often cancels social plans at the last minute. Attempts by friends to get closer to her, to make sure everything's okay, are met by reassurances that the couple's life is idyllic. After all, Grace, who's the guardian of a sister with Down syndrome, never thought she'd find a man who'd accept her and her sister, until leading-man-handsome Jack came along and swept Grace into a whirlwind romance like one from a movie. What their friends don't know is that the movie has turned into a horror flick.
B.A. Paris's debut, Behind Closed Doors, is a chilling confirmation of the adage that no one ever really knows what transpires in other people's private lives. The situation between Jack and Grace when they're alone is atrocious, the polar opposite of their flawless facade. Paris has created one of the most heinous villains in recent memory, upon whom even the most pacifist of readers might wish torturous revenge. They'll likely remain behind their own closed doors as they race through this thriller to see how, or if, the nightmare ends. --Elyse Dinh-McCrillis, blogger at Pop Culture Nerd