The Marriage Pact

What is the making of a fabulous read? My thoughts changed on this book. It has always been a book which keeps me riveted and unable to put down. This book is there! I was unable to stop reading. I absolutely had to find out what was next. I was snatching 3 minutes here, 5 minutes there. Intense is an understatement. All of that being said…I did not figure out, until I was half way through this book, what I did not like. This is a five star read! I can't put it down right??

The problem is….the characters. They do not act the way they should. Alice and Jake are highly intelligent people. Alice is an attorney and Jake is a therapist. They basically sign up to be in a cult. Yes! The Marriage Pact is a cult and a vicious one at that. show more These two "highly intelligent" people fall right into the trap of the Pact. They do no research. They never stop to think. They just blindly follow and sign everything in front of them…she is an attorney!! SHE KNOWS BETTER!! And Jake is no better….he does whatever Alice tells him to do. These two just didn't fit the cult followers to me.

All of that out of the way. This is such a psychotic read! I was all over the place. I was mad, frightened, gasping for air and almost cried…TWICE!! The intensity of the feelings that pass through the reader during this novel is above and beyond. This is a non stop and crazy story. Do not miss this. It is worth every crazy step!

"The Pact had the mysterious draw of those things that both repulse and attract you at the same time" – The Marriage Pact show less

What are you willing to do to keep your marriage alive?
Shortly after their wedding, Alice and Jake receive an invitation to join The Pact, an organization whose objective it is to keep their members' marriages intact because marriage is for life...

I had a love-hate relationship with The Marriage Pact. While it was totally readable, fast-paced and even quite gripping, I couldn't suspend disbelief enough to really get behind the story. I had trouble finding Alice, a musician-turned-lawyer, and Jake, a marriage counselor (how convenient), to be credible characters. She's a lawyer! He's a marriage therapist! And they end up in this situation?? Jake being a therapist counseling couples allowed for lots of "psychological" information and show more statistics relating to relationships/marriages to be included although I failed to see how his therapy sessions helped the story.
Alice remained quite a colorless character, which is perhaps due to the fact that the entire story is from Jake's first-person point of view.
I also found it really infuriating that nothing was explained. Without wanting to give the plot away, things happened that made me want to know how on earth The Pact could have managed that. From about 60% onwards, it began to turn into something resembling a science fiction story and that's when the eye-rolling really started, and then there was that ending. Typical "and that's it???"-ending.
Now, that sounds very negative, I know. But I did actually enjoy reading this. There was something utterly gripping about it. The first 60% anyway. So, provided you're happy to suspend disbelief and to not question the hows and whys, then this is quite a thrilling and entertaining domestic suspense story, and Michelle Richmond has managed to come up with something quite different in this genre. Well done for that.
I've decided to go for the middle rating here. The first part was closer to 4 stars, the latter part closer to 2 stars, hence 3 stars.
I received an ARC via NetGalley. show less

Jake and Alice are getting married and get a strange wedding present from one of Alice's clients. He is rich and famous and this present is an introduction into a special group called The Pact. First rule of The Pact? Don't, oh, wait, wrong story. But really, members don't discuss with outsiders that they are members, they give spouses monthly gifts, and they go on regular couple vacations, to name just a few of the rules Jake and Alice agree to follow. There can be some bad repercussions if rules aren't followed, though, as they quickly find out. The narrator was so good for the audio version of this. He handled men, women, and a couple of accents well. I was surprised by a couple of twists, and even though reading some of the comments show more on Goodreads some didn't like the ending, I was okay with it. I did expect another ending, and then maybe more of an ending from what WAS there, but again, I'm okay with how it ended. I liked Jake and Alice. I liked a lot of what was happened. Heck, the purpose of life that Jake came up with in one of his therapy sessions? Brilliant! I wrote that down! I want to have it written in calligraphy and hung on a wall in my house. 5 stars, easy show less

4.5 stars

Jake and Alice have just gotten married and have been gifted a locked box. It turns out this is a “marriage pact” if they are willing to sign it. It seems good at first, having a group of people to help others keep their marriages on track, but things get a bit odd with “crimes” and punishments that seem ridiculously harsh.

This really drew me in (and made me angry). I thought those punishments seemed to me to do the opposite of what they Pact was supposed to do. And whoa! That ending! (Though it was slightly rushed). But given my emotional reaction to everything going on in the book, I am giving this a very high rating.

This is a book I loved to hate - mainly because it could really happen and it is so horrible what did happen! Jake and Alice, both successful in their careers, decide to marry. As a crazy coincidence Alice invites a very important client of her law firm to the nuptials. One thing leads to another, and they find themselves joining The Pact, a secret group that says its goal are to make sure its members remain married forever. Of course, Jake and Alice assume happily is part of the equation, but they are wrong. Things go dreadfully wrong very quickly. This is an extremely well written tale of horror that I could not put down.

Ahhh, marriage. I’ve been married to my husband for eight years, and while it certainly isn’t a perfect marriage, it’s a good one. Probably because we don’t strive for perfection. And because we don’t strive for perfection nor are we perfectionists in any way, I take solace in the fact that had we been approached by a deranged marriage cult we probably would have answered with a solid "uhhhhh, no thanks.'

But lucky for us readers, Alice and Jake in Michelle Richmond’s “The Marriage Pact” did not make the same choices that I would make. After all, had they said ‘no thanks’, we wouldn’t have gotten this tense and dark thriller that took me by surprise. As someone who didn’t have any expectations going into it I had show more no idea what to expect, but I’m thinking that in some ways that worked in the book’s favor. Because after letting it collect some dust on my book stack, I finally picked it up and cursed myself for not picking it up sooner.

“The Marriage Pact” is a slow building thriller that puts the reader in the position of Jake and Alice, newlyweds who find themselves invited to join a prestigious and secret group specifically for married couples. They are both written in such a way that I could definitely see them getting sucked into it: for Alice, her commitment phobia from her past could easily make her nervous about falling out of step with Jake. For Jake, he’s so in love with Alice that he would happily indulge her in her eagerness to try it out. And because it’s seen from their perspectives, we too get to experience the gradual change from fun and quirky hobby to all encompassing nightmare. This point is what struck me the most as I read this book: it didn’t rely too much on major twists or turns to get the thrills into the narrative. While I do love a good thriller with lots of game changing moments, the horror and surprise in “The Marriage Pact” was far more based in the realities of the dark sides of human nature and group think, and how far we can be taken because of cognitive dissonance and denial. It felt fairly real that Jake and Alice would find themselves in a frog in the boiling water scenario because of this. The punishments for breaking the ‘rules’ of the group evolved from minor and silly consequences to full blown horror shows, and by the time we got to that they were in so deep that all you could feel was abject dread for them. The cultist perspective was masterfully done, as while Jake (our narrator) knew that things weren’t right, he also seemed under the spell in some ways, thinking that in spite of the horrific circumstances they were finding themselves in that his marriage to Alice was, in fact, stronger when all was said and done.

I do think that this book was a bit longer than it needed to be. While it was a fast read and an entertaining one too, I did find myself thinking that it was kind of repetitive at times. The various punishments and strange meetings with other ‘Friends’, as the members call themselves, tended to make things drag on a bit more than I would have liked, and I did find myself skimming here and there. I also found a few of the details unbelievable or farfetched, specifically about how much power and money this secret group could possibly have. And finally, given that Alice is a freaking LAWYER at a high powered firm, I REALLY found it odd that she didn’t have any problems with the giant manual of rules that you have to agree to abide by, via non negotiable contract. What kind of lawyer would agree to ANY of that without going through the entire manual bit by bit? But those are minor quibbles when the rest of the story was so creative and outside the box of what I’ve come to expect from thrillers today.

Overall I found “The Marriage Pact” to be a satisfying and compulsively readable novel. And it makes me thank my lucky stars that my husband and I are such lazy non perfectionists, lest we be approached by some crazy marriage cult someday. show less

If I had to describe this book in one word, it would be 'sinister'. A young couple, recently married, find themselves drawn into a secret society intended to help strengthen and maintain a happy marriage. They are invited to posh parties and given expensive gifts, but it quickly becomes clear that all is not as it first seems and Alice and Jake find themselves torn apart, put under intense scrutinary and heading off for brutal re-education sessions for the slightest transgression.

This is a very thought-provoking read and therapist Jake's narration helps with this. He mulls over his conversations with clients and lays bare his own musings on relationships and life in general. There is a salutary warning in there too - about the power and show more corruption that those in charge can become carried away with.. Ultimately, we all need to find our own path through life. A recommended thriller with a modern twist. show less