Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: The Opportunist

Author: Elyse Friedman

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 5/5

Diversity: Character with muscular dystrophy

Recommended For...: thriller, mystery, contemporary, psychological thriller, adult readers

Publication Date: December 6, 2022

Genre: Thriller Mystery

Age Relevance: 18+ (sexual content, abelism, cursing, fatphobia, alcohol consumption, sexism, domestic violence, sibling death, child sexual abuse, romance, animal violence, cancer, suicide, death)

Explanation of Above: There is some romance and sexual content in the book, including sex scenes. There is some domestic violence scenes shown and one scene shown of child sexual abuse including other mentions of it in the book. There are abelist comments and fatphobic comments made, including things about diet and weightloss. There is cursing in this book along with alcohol consumption. There are sexist comments and cancer is mentioned. Death of a sibling and others are shown and mentioned, as well as a scene of suicide mentioned. Cancer is mentioned. There is a hunting scene shown and mentioned in the book in regards to deer.

Publisher: MIRA

Pages: 336

Synopsis: 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.

Review: This was an interesting read. The book is a duel POV told between Alana and Kelly. Alana is a single mom who is trying to raise her child when she gets a call from her estranged brother about their father’s new girlfriend who is significantly younger than him. The brother, fearing that the woman named Kelly is just using their father for money, employees Alana to help him out Kelly to their father. Alana’s POVs offer insight into the past, especially when more evidence and details are found regarding her sister, Lillian’s, death. Kelly’s POVs offer insight into her motives for being there, which may not be entirely for love. For the most part I thought that the book was really well spun and very twisted. I didn’t see the outcome coming but I’d love to reread it to see what clues there were in the book that might have led to this outcome. The book also did great making every character slightly unlikable and they really have you rooting for the murderer in the end.

The only issue I had with the book is that the ending is just a little too simple for me and kinda goes into the “it’s all a dream” trope in a way.

Verdict: It was really good!