Book Review and Infographic: The Marriage Pact by Michelle Richmond
Published July 2017
Bantam
One-sentence summary:
Newlyweds Jake and Alice join a marriage club that turns out to be more of a dangerous cult.
Wow, The Marriage Pact is compulsively readable.
It’s a tough one to put down.
Jake, a therapist, and Alice, an attorney, have the same starry-eyed optimism about their futures together that most newly married people do. When an acquaintance offers them entry to a marriage club, it seems like a no-brainer.
Do you want to stay together? Of course we do!
Do you think meeting a group of like-minded couples might be beneficial? Sure, it couldn’t hurt.
There’s where the trouble begins. Their marriage is under intense scrutiny and surveillance. Punishments for infractions increase in severity until they’re terrifying and deadly.
And it’s soooo easy to make infractions. Talked too much at a party? Monitoring bracelet for you. And that’s just the beginning.
There are some frustrating parts to this book. Why did Alice accept her punishments so stoically? It’s a far cry from her character traits, even if she’s trying to give the club a fair chance. Why didn’t Alice and Jake talk, really talk, about what was going on? And why the heck were they singled out as being so special, any way?
Even with these rips in the narrative, The Marriage Pact is still extraordinarily readable. Like, up-in-the-middle-of-the-night finishing it readable.
Here are some similar books you might enjoy:
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
This book is the gold standard of domestic perfection at any cost. A family moves to Stepford and discovers that the wives are all beautiful, coiffed, dress-wearing, soulless automatons. Will she win her fight to remain her beautifully imperfect self? We know the answer.
The Circle by Dave Eggers
The cult of technology. Get on board or else. May joins a large tech firm and gets sucked into the company culture’s hive-thinking of tech first, humanity second. Privacy is sacrificed in the name of transparency. Collateral damage? Sad but unavoidable.
The Hopefuls by Jennifer Close
This one’s more of a stretch, but as I read this book, I kept thinking of The Stepford Wives. Beth’s husband is a political hopeful, but it’s not a lifestyle she chose. She alternately bristles against and passively goes along with it.
Check out my infographic for a quick look at books similar to The Marriage Pact:
