Let's live for today, shall we?

Poppy is the nanny everyone wants: young, fun and eager to please.  She enjoys most perks of the job, and when the story opens she is on vacation with the family she works for in Ibiza.  Even pliable Poppy has a breaking point, however, and when her boss is six hours late in returning home, Poppy has the audacity to express that this is unfair to both her and the children she's taking care of.  When she's unceremoniously fired and thrown out in the middle of the night, she goes to a local bar to drown her sorrows.  It's there she meets the mysterious Drew in The Truth Hurts.  It was at this point that I wondered if I was going to be reading about a romance or a serial killer.  Time would tell . . .

Drew is around 15 years older than Poppy, and he establishes an immediate connection with her.   Their whirlwind romance ends up with them getting married after only knowing each other for four weeks.  Part of their courtship involves an agreement that they will not ask each other about the past  -- they will both only live in the present.  As Poppy has some skeletons in her closet, she readily agrees.  Before they return to England, Drew buys an enormous house for them to live in.  Poppy is thrilled by this turn of events, but once they arrive at the house, she begins to have misgivings.  The house, while large and expensive, has an oppressive feel to it.  The locals are also not very friendly.  Once Poppy tells people where they live, the reactions she gets range from frosty to downright hostile.  While Drew goes off to work every day, Poppy is left all alone in the big, isolated house.  She soon has her equally flighty best friend, Gina, come to stay.  Gina and Drew seem to take a dislike to each other on sight, but they have a cordial enough relationship.  When Drew invites several old friends and their wives over for a weekend house party, Poppy once again feels some unease.  Are there secrets being kept from her, or is she just being young and overly sensitive?

The "now" events in the story alternate with "before" chapters.  In the earlier chapters, Poppy is living in as a nanny with a family she adores.  She thinks of the mother in the family, Caroline, as more of a friend than an employer, and Caroline's three children adore her.  So why is she working for a different family in Ibiza???

The action in the story never flagged, although I did wonder how Poppy could be so unconcerned with the reactions of the people in town or with finding out about Drew's background.  They had agreed to never talk to each other about their pasts, but it would seem Poppy would at least do some research online.  Then again, she didn't really have a family to turn to for help and she wasn't at all looking forward to trying to find another nannying position, so I guess she was afraid to rock the boat.  The book did have an unexpected twist at the end, so I was very happy that the story didn't have a predictable, tidy ending.

I received an advanced copy of The Truth Hurts from NetGalley in exchange for this review