Title: “The Day After the Party”

Author: Nicole Trope

Genre: Thriller

Publication Date: October 30, 2023

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ (2/5)

Nicole Trope’s latest, “The Day After the Party,” is the story of a woman who suffers memory loss on the night of her birthday, a night when many things go wrong and secrets are made, kept, and revealed. Is her memory loss real, or a convenient way to “forget” things she does not want to remember? 

The book is told from two points of view, and switches between the present and the past. It centers around two couples, one still together and one who have divorced, and the ties and lies that bind them to one another. Katelyn and Toby are married with a small child; Leah and Aaron are divorced and share nothing but animosity for one another and their overlapping friendships with Katelyn and Toby. 

I enjoyed the descriptive way Trope wrote her scenes, but found none of the characters remotely likable, which made it more difficult to care about the outcome of the story. I had a lot of questions about who had done exactly what, and to whom, as the story made its way (slowly at times) towards its conclusion, and while I had not figured out ahead of time how it would end, I did not find the conclusion all that interesting. For a book marketed as a psychological thriller, this felt more like a suburban drama/mystery to me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.