I am so pleased to be welcoming L.S. Stratton to Novel Kicks and the blog tour for her novel, Not So Perfect Strangers. 

Tasha Jenkins has finally found the courage to leave her abusive husband. Taking her teenage son with her, Tasha checks into a hotel the night before their flight out of D.C. and out of Kordell Jenkins’s life forever. But escaping isn’t so easy, and Tasha soon finds herself driving back to her own personal hell. As she is leaving, a white woman pounds on her car window, begging to be let in. Behind the woman, an angry man is in pursuit. Tasha makes a split-second decision that will alter the course of her life: she lets her in and takes off. 
 
Tasha and Madison Gingell may have very different everyday realities, but what they have in common is marriages they need out of. The two women want to help each other, but they have very different ideas of what that means . . .
 
They are on a collision course that will end in the case files of the D.C. MPD homicide unit. Unraveling the truth of what really happened may be impossible‒and futile. Because what has the truth ever done for women like Tasha and Madison?

*****

Madison and Tasha meet by chance. Tasha wants to leave her abusive husband and Madison has found out her husband might be having an affair.

A plan is hatched. Both husbands must die but will both women follow through with it?

Warning- a few spoilers ahead!

To use the word enjoy to describe how I feel about this book would feel strange considering the themes it explores – domestic violence, child abuse, revenge, affairs, murder.
Compelling would be a better way to put it I think.

Madison is a VERY complicated character and my sympathy for her and the empathy I felt was a bit of a rollercoaster. She has a very intricate history which involves abuse from a parent. This is enough to give anyone a skewed view of the world. It doesn’t excuse her actions but it at least gave me an understanding of them.

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