Hippie therapists, a week alone in the forest: Adam Sternbergh’s new book ‘The Eden Test’ is a domestic thriller with a twist

There are questions threaded through every intimate relationship, woven deeply into the fabric of a shared history. They take different forms and use different words, but they boil down to a stark inquiry: How far would I go to save this relationship? When things in the relationship are going well, these questions never come to the surface.

When things are off track, though …

Craig and Daisy, the couple at the centre of Adam Sternbergh’s page-turning new novel “The Eden Test” — “three years together and two years married” — are each reckoning with those questions, separately and in their own way.

Daisy has booked the couple into the titular Eden Test, a week of retreat in a rustic cabin, with a series of seven questions for them to share and discuss. “Seven Days. Seven Questions. Forever Changed,” the program claims, the whole process overseen (from a distance) by a pair of hippie therapists. The week, which she plans as a surprise for Craig, will start on their anniversary.

Craig, meanwhile, has booked tickets to Mexico with his mistress. He plans on ending his marriage with Daisy on the night of their anniversary and flying out the next day. He bites back his anger at having to drive several hours in order to end things when Daisy changes plans for that night — he’s got a ticking clock with a flight booked for the next day, after all.

Two decidedly different approaches to dealing with the same question.

Shortly after his arrival at the cottage, though, and still cranky from the unexpected drive, Craig’s resolve begins to waver. And then, together, they read the first question: “Would you change for me?” The stakes are high and immediate: Will Craig stay? Will their marriage survive?

But their relationship isn’t the only thing in peril in their forest retreat (this is a thriller, after all). Some of the locals seem to have taken a dislike to the outsiders and aren’t afraid to show it. Gunfire erupts near their cabin. And there’s the mysterious security guard, hovering on the periphery. And the forbidden orchard.

And the secret cellphone Daisy keeps using during their phone-free isolation.

Sternbergh, who grew up in Toronto, now lives in Brooklyn with his family; he works as an editor for the New York Times. The author of three previous mystery-adjacent novels, Sternbergh was nominated for the Edgar Award and the John Creasey New Blood Dagger from the U.K. Crime Writers Association for his first book, “Shovel Ready.”

With “The Eden Test,” Sternbergh is working firmly within the domestic thriller genre. Easily one of the most popular of the mystery/thriller genres, domestic thrillers are usually the province of female writers (including such popular Canadian figures as Shari Lapena and Marissa Stapley, for example), but Sternbergh acquits himself well. In fact, with its dual viewpoints and carefully measured secrets, the experience of reading “The Eden Test” has a similar feel to one’s first reading of Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl,” the 2012 novel that helped kick off the current boom in the genre. (I recognize that there are mixed feelings about “Gone Girl,” but for me, such a comparison is high praise indeed.)

It’s largely a matter of focus and focal points. Sternbergh has crafted a smart, fast-paced thriller rooted in the tiniest of domestic details and intimate uncertainty. As the tension mounts, and the bodies begin to pile up (this isn’t a spoiler: the book’s opening pages, set on the sixth day, follow the arrival of a private ambulance at the cabin to pick up two bodies), the core of the narrative remains focused on Daisy and Craig, the uncertainty of their relationship, and the quality and nature of the secrets they have kept from one another.

The shifting between the characters’ points of view (and some skilful concealment and prestidigitation) allows that tension and uncertainty to build until it is almost unbearable. At that point, Sternbergh performs a lovely — and genuinely surprising — double-twist, a wonderful bit of narrative skulduggery and a proper capstone to a compelling read.

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