The Happiness Thief was an amazing read! It's full of everything that makes the perfect psychological thriller! Mystery as Natalie starts to figure out what really happened to her. And Natalie's character is easy to like and relate to. The author did a great job bringing Natalie's personality to life. There are betrayals and twists and turns that I never saw coming. The beginning started a little slow but once you get going the next thing you know you will have finished the book! Definitely a must read!

Thank you Suzy Approved Book Tours and Nicole Bokat for sharing this amazing book with me! ( )

Natalie has some issues! Basically she blames herself for her mother’s death. Her mother died in an accident years ago and Natalie walked away. Survivors guilt, PTSD?? Probably a little of both! When her husband leaves her, Natalie decides to take a vacation to escape her troubles. But, this just leads to more trauma and more anxiety! There has been another accident and Natalie was there!

Natalie has suffered for years over her mother’s accident. It has left her as an overprotective mom and just an all around stressful human being. Her sister, Isabel, is just the opposite. She is the Happiness Guru. She helps people find their happiness. But something is just not right!

Talk about stressful and intense in so many ways! This story had me guessing and intrigued from the very beginning. Now, it did take a bit for me to get invested (most likely me and not the story!). But, once it hit me…the story did not quit!

Need a good psychological thriller that will have you captivated till the end…THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today!

I received this novel from the author for a honest review. ( )

Thank you to the author for this book which I won on A Novel Bee (FB).

At first I thought that Natalie "killed" her mother. It was in another sense that she thought she did. Natalie was her step-sister and held "Happiness" seminars. They were very close and then things start to happen in this book. In the Cayman Islands, where Natalie went to see her sister in her element, a car accident occurred which got her thinking about her mother (Isabel's step-mother) in which she was killed and Natalie thought it was her fault. They things start to happen and lies come out in all ways. She meets Jeremy via Cayman Island, a newspaper reporter, who's there to find out information on Isabel's seminars, and she becomes good friend with him and he helps her get information about the crash.

I really liked Natalie's daughter Hadley (but it drove me crazy that she called her HADS), from her ex-husband Marc.

Overall, a good read. ( )

How can you resist a book that opens with "I think I killed my mother."? Nicole Bokat's novel The Happiness Thief begins with that intriguing sentence that encourages the reader to discover why Natalie would think that.

When Natalie was thirteen, she was in a car accident that killed her mother. Natalie suffered a serious brain trauma, and she can't remember exactly what happened, except that she fears that she shined her flashlight in her mother's eyes and that is what caused the accident.

Natalie is with her stepsister Isabel on a Caribbean island where Isabel is speaking at a Happiness Conference. Isabel is a self-help guru (think Glennon Doyle or Brene Brown) who is trying to build her brand after writing a successful book, and working to finish a second book. People surround Isabel at the conference, wanting any piece of her and her advice that she can give them.

"Isabel was the powerhouse and the bulwark, while Natalie was the sensitive one" in the family. Natalie's husband recently left her and their teenage daughter Hadley for a younger colleague. The dissolution of her marriage has left Natalie depressed, and this trip is supposed to cheer her up.

While driving on the island at night, a car follows them and shines highbeams at them. Natalie is driving and hits something in the road, leaving blood on the bumper. She panics, and flashes back to the accident that killed her mother. Isabel and the man in the car behind them get out and look for what was probably an animal, but Natalie is convinced it was a person.

When they return home to Boston, Natalie receives an email from somone who says he knows that she hit someone on that road. Even though Isabel does her best to prove Natalie that she didn't hit a person, Natalie is not convinced.

There are two mysteries here- was Natalie responsible for her mother's death and did she hit someone on the island? I didn't find myself as invested in the mysteries as I did with Natalie's home life. The relationship between Natalie and her daughter Hadley was the strongest part of the book, that felt true and honest.

I found it difficult at first to keep track of the family situation- Isabel's mom (deceased), Natalie's mom, Natalie's dad who died when she was young, her stepfather who is Isabel's father. It took awhile to get it straight.

There are a lot of moving parts in this story, this is the kind of book you have to pay close attention to when you're reading. If psychological suspense and family drama is something you enjoy in a book, The Happiness Thief will quench your thirst. ( )

The Happiness Thief is a well written suspense novel about two sisters that will keep you turning pages until the end. I was pretty sure that I knew how it would end but the ending was so much better than I anticipated that it still had an element of surprise for me.

Natalie and Isabelle are step sisters and have been close since Natalie's mother married Isabel's father when they were young. Natalie is 41 years old and her life is a total mess. Her husband has left her and she has to balance their daughter's life between her house and his house with his new girlfriend. Natalie has had ptsd since her mother died in a car accident decades earlier. She was with her mother when the accident happened and even though she has no memory of the accident, she is sure that she caused it somehow. She travels to a retreat with her sister where a late night accident causes her ptsd to get worse. When she starts to get anonymous email about the accident, her life becomes even more unsettled and she relies on her sister even more. Isabelle is very popular and known as The Happiness Guru. She's written books about happiness and held frequent retreats on achieving a happy life. She's happily married and has always been the rock that Natalie could lean on. As Natalie and a newspaper reporter start digging into the emails, she finds out secrets that her family and sister have kept from her that can change her entire focus in her life.

This is a fantastic psychological suspense novel. I'm always drawn to novels about sisters and this is a perfect example of the love/hate relationship that exists between some sisters. Nicole Bokat is a new author for me and I intend to read some of her earlier books.

Thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book to read and review. All opinions are my own. ( )