The Opportunist by Elyse Friedman: Book Review

The Opportunist is a story of a family and the lengths they will go to for money and power. I loved the West Coast Canada setting!

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From The Publisher:

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 Thoughts:

The Opportunist is an exciting read. It was exciting, engaging and entertaining. Very few of the characters were likeable and just when you’d figured out who was good from those that weren’t you were thrown yet another surprise.

Alana is the single parent of a girl with a chronic, debilitating disease. She struggles to make ends meet, drives an old van ready to fall apart, and works at a job which makes a difference in the world.

She’s invited to the BC Coast island wedding of her step-father Ed to his much younger nurse-turned-romantic partner Kelly. Ed’s amassed a fortune and Alana’s step-brothers Teddy and Martin are concerned that Kelly is going to inherit Ed’s wealth once they are married. The brothers want Alana to help put a stop to this wedding. She is not close to her step-brothers and Ed, but makes the decision to attend.

And so begins a tale that is well-scripted and cleverly revealed. Memories from Alana’s past are featured throughout and frankly, I just wanted her to leave the island behind. The conclusion left me guessing until the end and was well worth the wait.

There are brief trigger warnings for the assault of children in this book which may be difficult for some. I do recommend this book to those readers who enjoy General Fiction with Thriller elements.

What I Liked:

• The propulsive storyline
• The thriller elements
• The satisfying conclusion

Acknowledgments:

Thank you to HarperCollins Canada and Netgalley for the DRC of this book in exchange for the honest review provided here.

Similar Books I’ve Reviewed:

Vacationland by Meg Mitchell Moore

The Summer Place by Jennifer Weiner

Half-Blown Rose by Leesa Cross-Smith