Krysten’s Review

One thing I love about Lisa Unger’s books (all two of them I’ve read) is the complex characters: They’re flawed and real, with dark secrets, traumatic backstories, and conflicting motivations. The second thing I love about Lisa Unger’s books (all two of them I’ve read) is the twisty AF stories: They’re layered and compelling and just realistic enough to be believable (not to mention unsettling).

Confessions on the 7:45 was a fast-paced read that I zipped through within the span of a few days. There was no meandering to the conflict (as there was in Last Girl Ghosted ), as the reader is thrust into the central problem right away. That said, I found Confessions‘s characters were a bit cliched, whereas Last Girl‘s characters felt more mysterious and compelling. The central conflict—Selena’s husband is screwing the nanny—was also a bit trite (main character Selena even says so herself, that she’s a walking cliche). However, there were enough twists and turns to keep me interested, and I did want to find out how everything connected in the end.

As the events of the story unravel, the characters (as well as the reader) begin to wonder: Can you ever really know and trust a person, even those who are closest to you? How do you know they aren’t hiding something from you, something life altering? And what if you could go back in time and choose the other path at that fork in the road that changed your life?

There was no undoing the bad without losing the good. That was the trick of it all. The tangle of life. Just move forward, recalculate, recalibrate, find a new path.

And that’s the thing. There is no going back. We’ve made our decisions, and we have to live with the consequences. Maybe the events of most people’s lives aren’t quite as dramatic, but the premise is the same: You can only go forward and make the best of the cards you’ve been dealt.