Grace’s motives are pretty straightforward: escape. I mean, in a way the two were probably made for each other. You can’t control your wife for over a year in such an obvious fashion and not raise some eyebrows. There’s no way any of his plans are going to last because even though his friends are stupid, they aren’t dumb. Jack sets himself up for failure because he’s an idiot.

Her attempts to leave are equally stupid because she is an idiot.Īlso, why is John Wick the only character in fiction to double-tap? Did no one watch Zombieland? Grace walks headfirst into what is obviously a bad deal in such a glorious fashion that I’m reminded of that old lie about chickens staring up at the rain and drowning. Now, I’ll concede that I’m being reductive as hell here, but every character in this book is so blitheringly, frustratingly, completely, and freakishly stupid that I can’t really help it. Also if she doesn’t pretend well enough she gets abused. The catch is that Jack is a lawyer (who helps battered women because hahahah irony!) with friends, so he’s forced to be social with his wife, who has to pretend to love him lest people find out she’s married to an abusive idiot. Jack then entraps his newly-wed wife so he can abuse her. He spends the next few weeks systematically cutting Grace off from the life she’s worked hard to achieve for reasons that don’t hold up under any kind of scrutiny, but she falls for them because she’s an idiot. So our plot is idiot #1, Grace, marries idiot #2, Jack, despite only knowing him for like six months.

Let’s see if we can figure this out together.

It’s disposable, joyless, yet just well-crafted enough with a hint of mystery to keep your attention. This is like…you know when you stumble upon some awful movie on The Hallmark channel because someone-not you-left it on, and then you go to change the channel yet somehow end up watching the entire thing? Behind Closed Doors is like that. Normally I have to force myself through bad books, and normally I’ll derive at least some pleasure between starting and finishing, even if it’s at the book’s expense. Paris is a bad book that I read in two sittings because I couldn’t put the stupid thing down.

Behind closed doors ba