Title: The Guilty Couple
Author: C.L. Taylor
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
First published: June 23rd 2022
Publisher: Avon
Finished reading: May 15th 2022
Pages: 352

“The irony doesn’t escape me – that to prove my innocence I need to commit another crime.”

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and Avon in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

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I tend to enjoy C.L. Taylor’s writing, and I’ve been looking forward to read The Guilty Couple ever since I first heard about it. The blurb sounded intriguing with the wrongful conviction and the wife deciding to bring down her husband, the man who framed her; definitely perfect building blocks to build your psychological thriller around. And while there were a few things that prevented me from giving this story the highest rating, as a whole it definitely turned out to be a highly entertaining and suspenseful ride.

The Guilty Couple uses a multiple POV structure where we switch between Olivia, Dominic and Dani. The three POVs complemented each other well and gave us different angles to explore as well as opportunities to introduce plot twists. That said, I do have to say that I much preferred Olivia’s POV, as hers was the most interesting and she was also the easiest character to connect to. I wasn’t a fan of Dominic at all, but then again he is supposed to be unlikeable… Dani is a different matter: I’m not sure up to what point her character is exactly credible. Why? First of all, I don’t see how she can be a detective AND a personal trainer at the same time; to make things worse she hardly seems to be working at all during most of the story as she is constantly off somewhere not work-related. She also came over as surprisingly gullible and even weak at times; something that doesn’t seem to fit with her role in the story.

What I did love of The Guilty Couple is the fact that some chapters are set inside the prison and how it shows the consequences of having spent time in prison after you are released; and how big of an impact it has emotionally especially if you were framed and know you are innocent. The relationship between Olivia and her daughter Grace was intriguing, and I liked learning more about how Olivia tried to get her life on track after what happened. I do have to say that I found the plot, especially towards the end, to be a bit too over the top to be fully credible… And especially how things ended. I also felt that there were too many different topics and sideplots and they ended up distracting a little from the main story. And then I’m not even talking about all the cheating and love triangle vibe, which I’m never a fan of…

That said, The Guilty Couple was still surprisingly entertaining and quite a fast read despite the few issues I had. If you enjoy a fast-paced and suspenseful psychological thriller and don’t mind dealing with a lack of credibility and unlikeable characters, you will probably have a great time with this one.

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