Doting wife, devoted husband, cherished child. Merry, Sam and Conor are the perfect family in the perfect place. Merry adores baking, gardening, and caring for her infant son, while Sam pursues a new career in film. In their idyllic house in the Swedish woods, they can hardly believe how lucky they are. What perfect new lives they've built for themselves, away from New York and the events that overshadowed their happiness there.

You Were Made For This starts as an picturesque story of marital and parental bliss. Newlyweds Merry and Sam have built a life worthy of an inspired Instagram following. Wholesome living, fresh Swedish air, and home grown nutritional meals.  But read a few chapters in and the split narrative starts to expose the cracks in their relationship. Merry is pulled from a Stepford-wife cookie cutter and gives every impression of being the perfect housewife and adoring mother. However her own chapters reveal a life at odds with her smothered feelings and the controlling personality of her domineering husband, Sam.

Enter best-friend Frank, a clever plot device and accelerated antagonist who throws a outsider's sharp perspective on Sam and Merry's constructed reality. The book takes a jolting turn from golden bliss to dark despair. Frank and Merry's bond is both suffocating and essential. They need each other with equal desperation, using the other for competitiveness and confirmation of self-worth. It's ugly and compelling to watch the two women push each other to the limits. One devastating event sends the novel careening into a downward spiral of loathing and disaster. 

This thriller is an exploration of the limits of devotion and the overbearing dangers of rivalry. I'll warn you now, read this book with caution. Finding your way out of the woods will be hard!