The Marriage Pact

My rating: * * *

Goodreads Description

Would you stake your life on your marriage? Newlyweds Jake and Alice are offered a mysterious wedding gift - membership of a club which promises its couples will never divorce. Signing The Pact seems the start to a perfect marriage. Until one of them breaks the rules. The marriage of their dreams is about to become their worst nightmare. Because The Pact is for life. And its members will do anything to make sure no one leaves . . .

My Review

If there was ever a tale of two halves, this is it!

To be brutally honest, the first half of this book had me less than riveted. I couldn't get my head around the concept of this story, and it just seemed much too far fetched and unbelievable to me. No-one in their right mind would ever join something like The Pact. The more I learnt about The Pact, with it's rules and regulations, and punishments, the more I found the whole story just totally ridiculous. And to think that two professional people, one a lawyer and the other a psychologist, would get themselves involved with something like The Pact just seemed much too unlikely. The Pact is nothing more than an extreme cult. But then I realized something: all over the world, every day, people join cults that sound absolutely absurd and bizarre to many of us, but yet, they often have a loyal following, and people willingly sign up to the rules and regulations of that specific cult.

Once I got my mind around that, the story improved. And then I hit the half way point in the book, and wow, did the pace rocket forward. Suddenly I found myself totally engrossed in Jake and Alice and their encounters with the representatives of The Pact. When Jake is taken off to an old prison, now used by The Pact for meting out punishments, I couldn't turn the pages of this book fast enough. I was so taken with the story, with what was happening to Jake, with the things that he was experiencing, that I couldn't put the book down. I read the second half of this book in two days flat.

The truth of the matter is this: in order to enjoy this book, you need to be able to suspend disbelief. If you are the type of person that battles to do that, then I don't recommend you read this story, because quite frankly, you won't enjoy it. I'm not normally the type of person that can read stories such as this one, but I managed here because I pushed my disbelief aside and focused on enjoying the story for its entertainment value. And I did actually enjoy it. I wouldn't absolutely rave about it, and yes, the concept of this story is pretty absurd, and I wasn't a massive fan of the ending, but I was entertained by this read.

Because of my see-sawing emotions throughout this book, I found this one very difficult to rate. At first, I was convinced that the story was heading for 2 stars. At one point I even considered giving up on it. But I generally don't like to give up on books, and I'm so glad that I didn't with this one because by the second half, I had changed my mind, and wanted to award 4 stars. As I turned the final page and put this book down on the couch next to me, I still wasn't exactly sure how I felt about it. All I can tell you is that it's definitely good enough to read. If, like me, the concept of The Pact just sounds much too over the top to you, consider pushing on. It's fairly entertaining, if of course you can handle the absurd nature of the plot.

So, all things considered, I'm going to go with 3 stars for this one...it was entertaining in a bizarre sort of way, and I did really enjoy the second half, but I didn't love the first half, I didn't love the plot and I didn't love the ending...so it gets 3 stars from me.

My Rating: * * *

Publication Date: December 2017 (South Africa)

Genre: Psychological Thriller

Format: Trade Paperback

Source: Review copy received from the publisher. Many thanks to author, Michelle Richmond and Penguin Random House SA for my copy. It was my pleasure to read and review this title.