Book Review
Title: Confessions on the 7:45 by Lisa Unger
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Rating: 4 Stars
Confessions on the 7:45 is a part of my Goodreads 2020 challenge and it wouldn’t have normally been on my radar but I finally decided to pick it up. The novel opens with a prologue of a woman watching a man, stalking him almost until he does something to another woman but we don’t know what it is and this might come into play later. We are introduced to Selena Murphy, her husband, Graham, their two sons, Stephen and Oliver as well as their nanny, Geneva. Selena recently learnt that her husband was cheating on her with Geneva but she isn’t angry about it in fact, she seems resigned as we learn Graham has cheating on her before. Selena has also come to hate her husband recently and she is bottling these feelings up in order to keep a happy, stable environment for her children. Geneva also isn’t happy with the arrangement and encourages Graham to look for work since he has been unemployed for a while. We are also introduced to Anne who is sleeping with her married boss, Hugh who is planning to leave his wife for her but Anne doesn’t seem interested in Hugh at all even disassociating during sex. Switching back to Selena’s perspective she meets a woman on the train home named Martha who I believe is Anne if that’s even her real name and they confess things to each other but Selena is uncomfortable with Martha’s implications of doing away with her lover entirely and we then switch to Pearl’s perspective. It seems like these perspective might be the different identities of one woman, so far I believe that Martha and Anne are the same person and Pearl might be as well.
Pearl is a teenager who lives a very strange life and I’m not sure what her purpose is yet. Meanwhile, Selena has confronted Graham about his affair and that hasn’t gone well, Anne is a con woman using men for money so when she gets fired by Hugh’s wife it is expected and she already has another con lined up. So far, the key players of Selena, Geneva and Martha have tied together, as I believe Geneva is going to disappear, not die but I think she might be the accomplice of Martha, another con woman trying to get money out of Graham and Selena as she has done before from what I can gather from the text messages both Martha/Anne and Geneva have on their phones. It seems that Pearl’s life is changing because she has become attached to one of her mother’s boyfriend, Charlie although her mother quickly moves on. Selena also receives a message from Martha despite not giving the woman her number and days later Geneva goes missing. Selena obviously has to lie to the police about the injury on Graham which she inflicted and about their relationships with Geneva otherwise they both look like suspects in her disappearance which she doesn’t want for her children and then we suddenly get Oliver’s perspective, it will be interesting to see how much he has noticed as a child about what has been happening in his house and if he knows anything about what is going on with Geneva and her disappearance.
We learn through Oliver that Geneva was possibly abducted on the Friday night as he recorded her leaving and talking to someone and that her car was in the driveway all weekend before it was moved and he knows that adults lie and that his parents are lying now which makes me question with Graham had something to do with her disappearance as Geneva knew the person who approached her or it could be something much bigger and darker than that. While the police are investigating Geneva’s disappearance there isn’t really much for them to work with right now unless a body turns up or some shocking information comes to light like the blackmailing of another husband in the neighbourhood and her affair with Graham. However, we do learn that Anne, Martha and Pearl are the same person and Pearl’s chapters are set in the past. After the murder of her mother, she was essentially kidnapped by Charlie in order to keep her out of the foster care system and he reveals he is a con man and teaches her everything he knows. This reveal is really important as we can know lump everything from Pearl, Anne and Martha’s chapters together and it makes sense that Martha would want Selena and Graham as her next con but she was working with someone and that might have been Geneva but I am not sure right now. We get to know a lot about the characters of Martha and Anne as well as Pearl but I am far more interested in Selena right now. She seems to be rekindling the love she had for Will, Graham’s brother as he urged her not to marry him and he has loved her for years although Selena has never cheated on Graham but it looks like she might now. She also meets up with Martha and learns that she gave the woman her card, although it is more likely Martha stole it from her bag or pocket to make Selena believe her lies which she does to an extent but she is questioning Martha’s authenticity.
We get more of Pearl’s past where we learn one of Charlie’s mark went south and despite their best efforts at being ghosts she managed to find them or so it seems as we don’t have the full picture yet when we are introduced to Hunter, which might have be Charlie’s alias for that mark. Hunter turns out to be a cold case investigator who was in charge of Pearl’s case although it remains unsolved. When the media get hold of Geneva’s disappearance he seems to recognise her but he can’t place her just yet. This also throws the Murphy and Tucker families into the limelight with the husbands becoming suspects in Geneva’s disappearance. Selena maintains that while she knew about the affair that neither she or her husband had anything to do with the disappearance and the footage of the person speaking to Geneva after she left their home doesn’t match her or her husband. We also get more backstory on Pearl and it seems their next mark was Pearl’s father because she is a secret meaning he might have been married and having an affair with her mother and they can extort that. Through Hunter we learn that Charlie, the con man seemed to be connected to a string of murders, all the women were singly mothers with daughters and after their deaths the daughters disappeared. It almost seemed like Charlie was conning the women for everything he could, killing them and recruiting their daughters or doing something with them as none of them have been found but Pearl is the only one mentioned but he does see some resemblance between one of the missing girls, Grace and the missing nanny, Geneva and these could be the same people recruited by a con man into that life under the premise of getting everything they ever wanted without having to work that hard for it.
At this point I wasn’t really sure where the novel was going and how Pearl’s history, Geneva’s disappearance and Selena tie together but I am hoping to find out soon. Shortly after this a body is found but it is badly disfigured so they don’t know if it is Geneva, but it means things have gotten harder for the Murphy family. Oliver also confesses to his grandmother about the video he took and when Cora watches it she realises that the woman talking to Geneva is Selena’s half-sister, Pearl. Through Pearl’s perspective we know she conned her father and left his life in ruins which is why she has heavily targeted Selena but Selena only knows her as Martha and the pieces are finally starting to come together. It seems that Pearl didn’t just want to con her father but to make him pay for everything he had done by destroying his life including his marriage and his relationship with his daughters but she seems to have held a grudge about how Selena and Marisol got everything in life and she has had to con people for a living so this is personal for Pearl. It also means that Selena might be drawn into a web of murder as she has a connection to Martha who is Pearl, who quite possibly killed Geneva when she realised that she was going to con Selena as she might feel only she has that right as the forgotten child. It also seems that Selena is the target but not for a con but to destroy her life the same way Pearl did to her father. Pearl is also connected to Geneva, formerly known as Grace, as she was also taken in by Charlie after the death of her mother. It seemed like Charlie killed the mothers and kidnapped the girls brainwashing them to become little con artists under his control but he is killed by Bridget who is killed by Grace leaving her and Pearl alone. Pearl knows Grace now named Geneva wants to stay with her and she agrees but I don’t know who killed Geneva yet or what Pearl’s final goal is.
The final section of the novel was really interesting as we see all the pieces come together and the motivates of Pearl are finally revealed and it turns out she wasn’t the bad guy in this story at all despite her being made out that way for the majority of the novel. I don’t have a good relationship with mysteries and thrillers but Confessions on the 7:45 actually took me by surprise. While it doesn’t do anything new with the genre it was well written, full of twists and turns that kept me guessing and the characters were fleshed out and realistic even the unlikeable ones. Overall, I found the book to entertaining and satisfying which earns it a solid 4 stars.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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