Natasha Wainwright's life seems ideal. After 16 years of marriage, she and her husband, Sean, have two beautiful daughters and a hotel in a Lake District resort town. She knows that not everything is perfect--running their business can be stressful and doesn't leave her much time to nurture her marriage--but Natty feels confident that she and Sean share a rock-solid love, and she welcomes the distraction of a visit from her best friend, Eve.
When one of Natty's daughters suffers a medical emergency while studying abroad, Natty promptly rushes to her side for a few days and returns to find that Eve's promise to help out back home translated to having an affair with Sean, who claims to be in love with Eve. The nightmare only gets worse as Eve begins to show her true manipulative colors and Natty makes a rage-driven mistake that could land her in jail. She can't give up on her family, though, especially after she finds an anonymous letter claiming that her family isn't the first to fall prey to Eve's treachery. As she delves into Eve's past looking for a way to exorcise her from their lives, Natty slowly realizes that she and her family are in grave danger.
Though several aspects of Keep Your Friends Close, the plot-driven sophomore novel from Paula Daly (Just What Kind of Mother Are You?), may strike some readers as a bit antifeminist, the story taps into the frightening notion that security is an illusion. This nail-biter will leave readers breathless and wondering how well they know their friends. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads