Meanwhile, Tess O'Leary is a career woman who returns to Sydney with her son after her husband, Will, confesses that he is in love with her cousin and best friend, Felicity.

Rachel Crowley, the school secretary, suspects that Connor is the man responsible for the unsolved murder of her daughter that still haunts her almost three decades later.

[5] Publishers Weekly concluded that, "Simultaneously a page-turner and a book one has to put down occasionally to think about and absorb, Moriarty’s novel challenges the reader as well as her characters, but in the best possible way.

"[2] USA Today's Patty Rhule gave the novel three-and-a-half stars out of four, noting that Moriarty "avoids an unfortunate trend in women's fiction to make men bad guys or doofuses.

"[6] Writing for The Guardian, author Sophie Hannah selected the novel as one of her "top 10 pageturners", adding that "it's a perfectly paced mystery with a beautiful solution and a breathtakingly twisty final chapter.