I think Best Intentions is a book about suspicion and misunderstanding. I can picture the book made into a movie by Afred Hitchcock. Jimmy Stewart stars as the easy-going financial reporter Sam Barkley. Mary Tyler Moore is his lovely, but worried wife, Lisa Barkley. (The kids have been watching a lot of Dick Van Dyke DVD’s lately.) Rita Hayworth or Marilyn Monroe co0stars as the enigmatic and stylish Deirdre, Lisa’s best friend.

The plot is fairly simple. Lisa’s worried about money and about her job. The PR firm where she works has been sold to another company out of Philadelphia, of all places, not a good thing for Lisa. Sam’s worried about his job, too; he hasn’t been able to break a big story in a good while. Then, bigger worries take over: Lisa finds evidence that Sam is having an affair. Eventually, as in most Hitchcock movies, a murder takes place. And readers, who have been trained through the first half of the book to be very suspicious of everyone in the novel, continue to sort through the lies and half-truths and misunderstandings to puzzle out whodunnit.

As I said, I think Best Intentions is about suspicion and family tensions and misunderstanding, and I also think the ending is somewhat ambiguous. If you’ve read Best Intentions, tell me, are you satisfied that the solution presented is whole story? Or was some else involved in the murder?

Shonda says: “At one point I truly felt for Lisa because I didn’t know who was telling the truth and who was not. I have to admit, after finishing the book and finally knowing Sam’s side of the story, I still had my doubts.”

Word Lily: “Listfield instills this woman about to turn 40 with all the angst and self-doubt of a coming-of-age tale.”

Ravenous Reader at Bookstack: “Best Intentions is described as a novel of ‘domestic suspense,’ a genre with which I wasn’t familiar, but which certainly describes what makes this book different from a typical thriller of mystery. Relationships are at the heart of the book – family, friends, and colleagues – and the assumptions we make about those whom we’re closest to.”

Recommended, if you’re OK with a sort of ambiguous ending that maybe wasn’t meant to be ambiguous.