The Playdate

Setting up the playdate is the simple part. Readying the house is harder, because the narrator suddenly notices how many photographs she has collected, each one showing the tidy household she is meant to be part of: a wife, a husband and a child. None of it is what it seems.

At playgroup she has met a new friend, a mother unlike the rest, whom she instinctively trusts and wants to confide in. Yet there are things she cannot share with anyone, a secret that follows her into her dreams and jolts her awake, one that another mother might never grasp. She begins to wonder whether this new friend is concealing something too.

Victoria Jenkins, author of The Argument, builds this psychological thriller toward a twist near the end. Readers who enjoyed Friend Request, The Silent Patient and The Girl on the Train are the likely audience.