Goodnight Beautiful by Aimee Molloy

Newlyweds Sam Statler and Annie Potter are head over heels, and excited to say good-bye to New York and start a life together in Sam's sleepy hometown in upstate New York. 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.

My Verdict: Not only is Goodnight, Beautiful an engrossing story. It is one in which we grow to really like Sam and Annie, the main characters, and we want everything to work out for them. Molloy also masterfully creates one cliffhanger after another, though, and we keep reading, intent on discovering how it all will turn out. There is nothing I dislike more than a psychological thriller where it feels like the author is trying too hard to create twists and to make everything fall into place in the end. Fortunately, that is not what Molloy does in this book. She weaves the tale in such a way that the reader can't believe they didn't put the pieces of the puzzle together, but in a way that is natural and unassuming. The homage to another author, perhaps the master of thrillers, is a superb addition to the story, but disclosing his or her identity would be a huge spoiler. This is a lovely and well-put-together story that is qualitatively different from other psychological thrillers and may very well leave you feeling darn near joyful. I give this psychological thriller 5 stars.