behind closed doors // b.a.paris

published: 2016
pages: 293 
ISBN: 978-1-250-12100-4
read: 2/26 to 3/2 2017
rating: 1) i didn't like it 2) it was okay 3) i liked it
           4) i really liked it 5) it was amazing 6) i loved it

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"As he closes behind me, I can't help thinking it's a shame he's such a sadistic bastard, because he has wonderful manners." 

-Grace

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SYNOPSIS

Everyone knows a couple like Jack and Grace. He has looks and wealth; she has charm and elegance. He’s a dedicated attorney who has never lost a case; she is a flawless homemaker, a masterful gardener and cook, and dotes on her disabled younger sister. Though they are still newlyweds, they seem to have it all. You might not want to like them, but you do. You’re hopelessly charmed by the ease and comfort of their home, by the graciousness of the dinner parties they throw. You’d like to get to know Grace better.

But it’s difficult, because you realize Jack and Grace are inseparable.

Some might call this true love. Others might wonder why Grace never answers the phone. Or why she can never meet for coffee, even though she doesn’t work. How she can cook such elaborate meals but remain so slim. Or why she never seems to take anything with her when she leaves the house, not even a pen. Or why there are such high-security metal shutters on all the downstairs windows.

Some might wonder what’s really going on once the dinner party is over, and the front door has closed.

MY THOUGHTS
what in the chicken nuggets of the world!
(yikes. the review are not great on amazon.) 

thanks to Sarah for starting a book club and picking this book because I'm not sure i would have gotten to it sooner. i haven't really seen it all over social media (which is how i find most of my books) so i wouldn't have gotten to it. 

anyway, the reviews...
uhm....a lot of people are saying that they don't like the sadistic plot of this story and while i can say it was sort of graphic when Jack is telling Grace the story, that's about as graphic as it gets. i don't want to mention his job on here because i think it could be a bit of a spoiler, but because of his fascination with the subject, i could see how some people would be bothered by some other parts of the story. 
it had other stuff but it wasn't disturbingly repulsive to the point of hate (for me anyway).
i think the scene that bothered me the most was the one with Molly. 
i fucking haaate Jack for that. 

i liked the story. 
it did a good job at catching my attention and keeping me in suspense. i wanted to know what happened right away so it was hard for me to put it down (and like always, i jumped around.) 
it had me guessing what would happen since the begging. and even if you're the kind of person that's able to figure out what happens in 2 seconds, you might be right. but how did we geeet there!? 

i liked that this is told in a past/present form so you get to see what happened (present) and how it all lead up to it (past). 
i liked that Millie, even with her disability, was still pretty effin smart. 
i liked that Esther was a total bitch in the beginning but she ended up being a home girl in the end. 
i think the one thing i disliked about the book was the writing sometimes. 
LEARNT
just say learned. 
I'm pretty sure there's a very good reason why she used learnt buuut still. 
that and i think i might have found another little mistake but i like finding those. 

overall, i don't really understand all the hate its getting over on amazon but hey! everyone has their thing. 
you couldn't pay me enough to like frozen. 

anyway, i cant wait to do the group discussion! 
ill probably come back and update the post. 
i think the most amazing thing about a group chat on the same book is the way people visualize/interpret things. you can learn something new just by listening to another persons perspective on it! ahhh!!!

as always, spoilers!, right after. 

thanks for reading!

#lesreads on IG

SPOILERS!!!

So Grace is at the park one day with her sister who is up dancing by the stage when Jack approaches her to dance. 

after they're done, they go sit down with Grace and Jack introduces himself. 

to keep it short, they end up dating. 

within three months of dating, he proposes and they're to be wed right away. (personally for me, that's a red flag right there.)

they plan their dream home together....(he already had it built so he was just trying to make it seem like she chose it.) and he asked her to quit her job because he didn't want to deal with having an away wife (sort of another red flag). 

everything is nice and dandy until the wedding night. 

of course Grace wanted to have Millie be her maid of honor but for some reason Jack fought it (HELLO RED FLAG #9823748927 in that relationship). 

eventually he gives in and he "allows" her to be in the wedding. 

come wedding day, her dad is walking her up the aisle and Jack walks up with Millie. and then of course, he knocks her down causing her to fall so she wouldn't be in the wedding....but tries to blame it on her....but come on. everyone knows he's guilty. (i mean as the reader not in the wedding party.) 

Grace of course wants to be with her in the hospital but Jack makes a case that because she's unconscious anyway and she was thoroughly checked out, there's really no reason to miss the wedding (red flag #2398741982374) but if she really wanted to, they could post pone it. 

of course they get married....they go to their honeymoon hotel where she gets in the shower and when she gets out he's missing. 

she starts calling him, thinking of everything that could have happened when she finally gets a message telling her that she needs to calm down. overreacting isn't a good look on her. 

she's all wtf but whatever. 

the next day he picks her up and he had promised that he'd take her to see Millie but of course he doesn't. 

very clearly he tells her that she belongs to him now and at that very moment she needs to pick between him or her sister. (red flag #23984719238749182734) and for some stupid ass reason she picks him. 

they make it to Thailand where he finally tells her the reason he married her; MILLIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

then he tells her the story about how he used to adore his mother but i guess she wouldn't defend him when his dad would beat him up so he started to hate her. 

eventually, the dad beats the mom and locks her up in the basement. at first he was afraid but little by little he started to feed off of it. 

eventually he hits his mom too, to the point of killing her. 

and when the dad comes into see what happens, Jack manages to frame the dad for the murder of the mom. 

and ever since then he's had a fascination with the subject. 

so much so that he became a lawyer defending abused women. only because it gave him access to everything he's ever wanted. 

of course Grace freaks the fuck out and she tries to run away but he's always.one.step.in.front.of.her!!!!!!!!

A L W A Y S !!!!

gah! 

she manages to get away and causes a scene in the lobby but he makes it seem like she's mentally ill and forgot to take her meds on their flight so its dismissed. 

so for 2 weeks, he locks her up in the balcony while he goes out to do his own thing and eventually they make it back home. 

she has some sort of "freedom" but every time she tries to escape, he docks a weekend trip to see Millie and eventually locks her up in a room with access to soooo little. 

Oh yea!, before they got married, he got her a dog, Molly. 

when they're in Thailand he tells her that there's no maid and she's like "wtf!?" 

well, he had told her that the maid at their home would take care of Molly but in reality he tied the dog up in the basement and left it with little water causing her to die. and making Grace pick her up and bury her. 

what a bag of dicks that Jack. UGH I HATE HIM!!!!!!

anyway...so they have gatherings and they go out when need be and when she gets invited somewhere he either cancels for her or escorts her. 

he never lets her out of his site. 

Millie knows that Jack is a bad man but is smart enough to only confide in her sister. 

so to help her out, she starts faking that she cant sleep so they give her over the counter pills to help her out. 

one day when they're out to lunch, Mollie asks Grace to help her in the bathroom where she manages to give her 40 of those sleeping pills. 

Millie lets her know that she's been faking her sleeping issues to get the pills to give to her. 

Grace says no. 

Millie says yes. 

eventually she shoves them in her shoes and sneaks them into her room by distracting Jack. (he checks EVERYTHING on her before leaving anywhere. she cant even have pen and paper) 

anyway, so the reason Jack married Grace was because he wants Millie. 

since he feeds off of fear, he knows that Millie, because of her down syndrome, will be able to give him what he needs. 

she LOVES the color yellow, so while he's trying to butter her up he tells her that her room and everything in it will be yellow....but in reality as soon as she moves in, she's going straight into the room in the basement. 

as all this is going on, Jack has a case that he's sure to win (he's never lost one) and Grace starts putting her plan to action. 

every night he gets home, he takes a drink of whisky so she's convinced him that she's lost her appetite and that only a drink of whisky will help her regain it. 

as much as he's in control, she's finally realized that he needs her to get access to Millie in a way. 

so they get into a routine of drinking whisky together and she devices a plan to crush the pills and put them in his drink. and then some!!!

before Millie is to live with them, they "plan" one last trip to Thailand (he goes there for who knows what but I'm pretty sure its not to sight see)....so for her, counting on the fact that he'll lose the trial, sets her plan in motion. 

he gets home from his trial and tells her they lost. 

she pretends to have something in her eye and asks him to look at it since she doesn't have access to a mirror. 

while hes checking her eye out she drops the dust of the pills in his drink and then they get to talking. 

he talks about how he's mad that he lost and then tells her something about not being able to wait bring Millie home or something. 

idk, i don't remember. 

that's when she throws her whisky at his face and runs out of the room. 

hes like wtf, goes after her and finds her in her hiding place. 

because of her action he tells her hes going to take her into the basement. she puts up a fake fight admitting defeat. 

when they're close to the basement, i have no idea wtf happens but she manages to lock him in the basement. 

she runs upstairs to get the cups and hide her evidence. she can hear him screaming at her to let him out but she's trying to ignore him getting her stuff together. (why cant he get out himself though....cause it locks from the outside. there's no way to get out unless it's opened from the outside.) 

she goes into his office and as luck would have it, her passport, flight tickets and some money are on his desk...since she has no money to her name, she calls Esther. 

(the ONLY reason she even knows Esther's number is because when they went to lunch she tried giving it to her but since she doesn't have a cellphone, she repeats it to Jack and then repeats it several times under the pretense that she doesn't remember it.) 

she called her to get the number to a taxi service but Esther insists on taking her to the airport to go to Thailand. 

in their trip, Grace tells Esther that Jack was feeling too beat up about losing the trial and because he still had paperwork to wrap up, that she should just go on ahead and he'd meet up with her. 

she also tells her that he couldn't take her to the airport because he had drank a little too much so that's why she had called asking for the number to a taxi services. 

she gets to Thailand, same hotel. 

and she passes the time. 

she calls and leaves him messages pretending to be this happy, lovey wife eventually leading to a very "worried" wife. 

days pass....and someone from the Embassy lets her know that her husband has been found dead. they don't tell her for a while but eventually they tell her he has committed suicide. 

so she flies home and Esther picks her up. 

before they head home, Esther suggests they get coffee and talk since traffic is terrible anyway. 

that's where Esther tells her that Jack was found in the basement and that he had overdosed but what ultimately killed him was dehydration. 

they say that he locked himself in the basement because he knew he didn't have enough pills to kill himself and he didn't want to be able to change his mind. 

then Esther tells Grace that its a shame because when she picked her up he seemed to be in a good mood and even waved at them from the window. **wink wink**

Esther knew all along that Jack was a piece of shit so she's willing to tell little white lies to help her out. 

and what cemented that for her was the fact that when they threw Millie a birthday party, everyone gave her jewelry and she gave her a red box to keep it all in. Millie says her favorite color is yellow and Esther tells Jack she could have sworn he said red. 

....the basement he was in was covered in red with paintings of battered women all over the walls. 

she knew he was a dick bag all along.

...and that the gist of it. 

i mean there's still stuff i left out but for the most part. 

ahh!!!

thanks! 

have a good weekend.