The Opportunist, a review by Sherry

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The Opportunist
Elyse Friedman

336 pages
Mira
Published December 6, 2022

Amazon | Goodreads

About the book

A deliciously sly, compulsively readable tale about greed, power and the world’s most devious family.

When Alana Shropshire’s seventy-six-year-old father, Ed, starts dating Kelly, his twenty-eight-year-old nurse, a flurry of messages arrive from Alana’s brothers, urging her to help “protect Dad” from the young interloper. Alana knows that what Teddy and Martin really want to protect is their father’s fortune, and she tells them she couldn’t care less about the May–December romance. Long estranged from her privileged family, Alana, a hardworking single mom, has more important things to worry about.

But when Ed and Kelly’s wedding is announced, Teddy and Martin kick into hyperdrive and persuade Alana to fly to their father’s West Coast island retreat to perform one simple task in their plan to make the gold digger go away. Kelly, however, proves a lot more wily than expected, and Alana becomes entangled in an increasingly dangerous scheme full of secrets and surprises. Just how far will her siblings go to retain control?

Smart, entertaining and brimming with shocking twists and turns, The Opportunist is both a thrill ride of a story and a razor-sharp view of who wields power in the world.

My Review

I flew through this book.  While the concept isn’t new, a potential gold digger trying to get money from a rich old man, there was something that held my interest.  While I had no idea where this was going from the start, I figured out the twist long before the reveal.  But I still enjoyed the read.

I’ve been on a roll of cat and mouse thrillers, and I liked this one because I wasn’t always sure if there was a cat and mouse and if there was, exactly who was involved.  I was not a fan of any of the characters, but I think that was intended.  As I made my way through the book, I kept changing my mind on who I thought the title was referencing.  All of the characters are quite the opportunist at one point or another, but who was the most opportunistic?

This does read more like a family drama than a thriller, but with so much at stake and going on, it really does fit the bill of a psychological thriller.

If you love fast paced melodrama, you will love joining in the game of cat and mouse.

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