Sarah Bonner revenge duo: A spoiler-y review

I have to admit, I love a good revenge story. S**ty people getting their comeuppance is totally my jam! That's what led me to pick up Her sweet revenge at my local library. I'd not heard of author Sarah Bonner before. I looked her up and her bio says that she grew up dreaming of a career as a writer but instead became an accountant. She cites the pandemic as the watershed that led her to pursue her passion. Her first novel, Her perfect twin, was published in 2022. I read it pretty much straight after Her sweet revenge. My review of both books is the subject of this post.

Warning: I have A LOT of thoughts on the two books and I can't articulate them without spoiling, so please be warned that my reviews contain major spoilers (actually, pretty much the whole game is given away...).

Her sweet revenge | Published April 2023 | Read October 2025

OK, so Her sweet revenge starts out with the story of Helena and her husband, Edward, who live a charmed life in Exeter. They seem happy enough, although Edward has a meddling mother, Geraldine, who makes it clear that Helena is several stations below where she expected his wife to be. Bonner writes the mother-in-law-from-hell somewhat cartoonishly, but deliciously evil and on point with the vibe of the book, so I can forgive her for that.

Thea is Helena's best friend, although she lives in the United States, absent and unable to support her friend and things start to fall apart. No spoilers here, as the blurb tells the reader this piece of information, but Helena dies in a terrible accident, yet Thea believes it was murder. Thea starts digging into Helena's death and receives a threatening note telling her to stop. The note has the opposite effect, and Thea is determined to avenge her friend's death.

I rather liked the first part of the book as I warmed to Helena instantly. Edward is a bit wet and Geraldine, as I mentioned above, is something of a caricature, but the story of Helena's unravelling life (that includes blackmail as she has a marriage-ending secret) and posh family's dysfunction is entertaining, if not a little frustrating. I liked Thea, too, as she's kind of a bad ass and uses her smarts to work out what happened to Helena. She's a much stronger character than either Helena or Edward.

Spoilers ahead...Unfortunately, the book's second half doesn't live up to its promise or its premise. Thea returns to the UK to seek revenge, and teams up with new friend, Jenn, whom she shares office space with in Brighton. The whole revenge scenario depends on the reader NOT figuring out that Jenn is the same person as Helena's friend (whose name I can't recall) who Helena confided her secrets to as things started to go pear-shaped. Jenn is playing Thea and I guessed that so the romp to the end was less than suspenseful for me. The other twist is that Thea knows that she is being played and plays Jenn in return. That's the revenge.

I had trouble rating this book as the first half is well constructed and sets up the book for a cracking finish. However, the second half is messy, despite the presence of Thea. There are plot holes galore and the whole thing is implausible. I get that it's a thriller and there is some suspension of disbelief required, but the story still needs to be plausible. I liked all the backstory to Jenn, the con artist, but some of it could have been left out. The ending is bonkers as well, as Bonner tries to shoehorn Geraldine into the motive for Helena's death (implausible) and the way Thea catches Jenn out is silly.

As one Goodreads reviewer observed, if Thea is so devastated by Helena's death, why not seek justice rather than revenge? There is so much scope with this idea to make a juicy revenge story, but it's not much of that at all. Jenn does get her comeuppance, but not in any kind of dramatic way. I got to the end and felt sad that Helena had died and that revenge for her death was pretty meh.

My three stars have been awarded for the premise, for bad ass Thea, and for Bonner's writing, as the story itself, if one forgets how unbelievable it is, makes for an entertaining reading journey.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

Her perfect twin | Published January 2022 | Read October 2025

I raced to the library to find Her perfect twin as the reviews I'd read of Her sweet revenge mostly seemed to agree that the the former is the better book. I also love the idea that identical twins could swap identities for an evil purpose!

The twins in the book are Megan and Leah, supposedly impossible to tell apart even as estranged adults. Leah is the Nasty One who writes a tell-all book about their collective childhood, pushing the Nice One, Megan, out of the picture and denying her the spoils. Megan confronts Leah one night at her isolated cabin and their argument turns to murder. Megan must pretend to be Leah to get away with killing her, something that becomes increasingly difficult as the pandemic hits. Again, this is a cracking premise for a domestic thriller that fails to materialise. Read on for my spoiler-y review.

Spoilers ahead...If you read the book's blurb, you already know that Megan kills Leah, so there's no suspense around the "which twin is she" question as the reader knows it is Megan-pretending-to-be-Leah. Before getting into all that, the reader must contend with the frustration of reading about Megan, who is a complete doormat. She is bullied by Leah (no wonder they are estranged) who steals everything she has ever loved from her. There is an intriguing backstory to the women's childhood that Leah exploits, earning her millions, however readers are manipulated into thinking that Leah Bad, Megan Good without being given the chance to work that out themselves.

If all that is not enough, Leah is sleeping with Megan's husband, Chris who turns out to be a complete gaslighting, abusive p**k. Leah and Chris have been mocking Megan behind her back, gaslighting her into madness. On top of all that, Bonner reveals halfway through the book that Chris is a sociopathic conman who never loved Megan and has been plotting to steal her money from the get-go, engineering their initial meeting. This turns the premise into a different kind of book and all the ensuing descriptions of the abuse Megan takes from Chris are super hard to read.

The book doesn't work from there, as it stretches believability. Clever character-driven domestic thrillers depend on authentic characters, complicated relationship dynamics and love gone bad that end up with people hurting one another for deeply psychological reasons. I don't understand why Megan married Chris, or at least why she stays with him. There's a hideous past domestic abuse scene that is referenced that would have made me run a mile. Chris is a complete b*****d, and Megan grows to hate him as much as he seems to hate her.

This turn of events then makes the book even more implausible. Chris is painted as a computer whizz with a lucrative trend-spotting job, yet his motivation for the con is money. He has loads of money! Also, Leah is the one with the millions, so why not con her? He could have saved himself the hassle of marrying Megan!

Other things bothered me, too. There is hardly any context for Megan murdering Leah (other than she's a nasty human) and then, even though Megan is The Nice One, she shows no remorse for killing her sister. Bonner leads the reader to believe that Chris is going to win - as it is revealed he has been spying on both sisters and knows everything that Megan has done and is planning - and then the reader is forced to endure more abuse porn. Megan is painted as clever throughout the book, yet puts up with Chris's abuse. I wish Bonner had used those smarts to create a more clever resolution. Instead, we get a sudden act of bad-assery from Megan that seems out of character, and Chris is charged with Leah's murder. On top of all that madness, we then get a whole bunch of exposition in the final chapters from Chris's lawyer, also a complete p**k, that is completely unnecessary. I think Bonner was trying to build suspense and keep the reader hanging about Chris's comeuppance. It doesn't work as a plot device and forces the ending to be rushed.

The book leaves it up to the reader to decide whether Megan is pretending to be Leah, but it's not a clever ending, because we know that she is! There's nothing to suggest it isn't Megan, so Bonner misses an opportunity to make the reader question this. There are some glimpses of suspense and questions over the surviving twin's identity, but they are left unexplored. That's such a shame, as the bones of a clever thriller are there, they just don't turn into anything with substance. There are so many plot holes, shedloads of implausibility, unnecessary complications that confuse rather than create suspense, inconsistent characterisation, and threads that go nowhere.

My two-star rating is generous, but I'm sticking with it for the premise and the writing. Bonner is a terrific storyteller, but the execution of whatever ideas she had in her head for this book needs A LOL of finessing.

Rating: ⭐⭐