Review: The Arrangement

Robyn Harding's The Arrangement is another of those books I read an embarrassingly long time ago. It was the first of Harding's that I had read and I finished it waaaaayyy back in July. Oops. Sometimes when it takes me that long to get to a book it's just because I'm insanely busy. Others it's because the book under or overwhelmed me and I just wasn't sure what to write. In the case of this one, I didn't like it quite as much as I expected - but didn't dislike it! - so I just wasn't sure what to say about it.

Here's the synopsis:

Natalie, a young art student in New York City, is struggling to pay her bills when a friend makes a suggestion: Why not go online and find a sugar daddy—a wealthy, older man who will pay her for dates, and even give her a monthly allowance? Lots of girls do it, Nat learns. All that’s required is to look pretty and hang on his every word. Sexual favours are optional.
Though more than thirty years her senior, Gabe, a handsome corporate finance attorney, seems like the perfect candidate, and within a month, they are madly in love. At least, Nat is…Gabe already has a family, whom he has no intention of leaving.
So when he abruptly ends things, Nat can’t let go. She begins drinking heavily and stalking him: watching him at work, spying on his wife, even befriending his daughter, who is not much younger than she is. But Gabe’s not about to let his sugar baby destroy his perfect life. What was supposed to be a mutually beneficial arrangement devolves into a nightmare of deception, obsession, and, when a body is found near Gabe’s posh Upper East Side apartment, murder.

I'm not sure what it was that I didn't like about this book. Maybe it's not even that I didn't like it. It could honestly just be that I had really high expectations for it going in. I think, after all these months, I'm finally having an epiphany about this one! *rolls eyes at self* People had raved about Harding's novel The Party or Her Pretty Face so I think I expected this thriller to blow my socks off.

I was surprised by the ending, though, so I guess the socks were a bit blown off. It was also kind of a quick double surprise once a few details came to light and then wham another few details made it so much more twisted.

I think it was a wise choice to start the book with a prologue and have Natalie calling her (estranged) father and admitting that she killed someone. I wasn't totally sure I believed her but throughout the book you kind of start to think...well...maybe she did kill someone. Harding keeps the reader on their toes as the story starts four months prior to the prologue and moves forward through time. The story is told in third person and from both Natalie and Gabe's perspectives, which creates a ton of tension throughout the book.

Speaking of blown off socks (sorry...that image and cliche is just working for a great number of things right now)...it turns out I have actually read a Robyn Harding book before. She's another former chick lit turned thriller author and I had no idea. I even reviewed it way back in 2011 after getting it from the library because it had a "Canadian author" sticker on it.

I especially liked that, in the acknowledgments, Harding wrote about how she talked with sugar babies, ones like Natalie. Really talked to them to find out their motivations and experience in the "sugar bowl" and having sugar daddies. I felt this showed that she respected that these women were making conscious choices and wanted to acknowledge what she had learned from them.

I can't say I loved The Arrangement but I think thriller lovers should think about checking out Robyn Harding's novel. And then maybe read her new one, The Swap, which comes out next month!

*An ARC of this novel was provided by the publisher, Simon & Schuster Canada, in exchange for review consideration. All opinions are honest and my own.*