The Page 69 Test: "The Expat Affair"

Monday, June 2, 2025

"The Expat Affair"

Kimberly Belle is the Edgar Award winning, USA Today & internationally bestselling author with over one million copies sold worldwide. Her titles include The Paris Widow,

The Marriage Lie, a Goodreads Choice Awards semifinalist for Best Mystery & Thriller, and the co-authored #1 Audible Original, Young Rich Widows series. Belle’s novels have been optioned for film and television and selected by LibraryReads and Amazon & Apple Books Editors as Best Books of the Month, and the International Thriller Writers as nominee for best book of the year. She divides her time between Atlanta and Amsterdam.

Belle applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, The Expat Affair, with the following results:

Page 69 of The Expat Affair opens with Rayna being interviewed by a detective after discovering last night’s date, murdered on the floor of his shower. The picture she’s referencing below is one she posted to her Instagram, wearing his priceless diamond necklace. The next morning, a man is dead and the necklace missing—and Rayna claims to have slept through it all. From page 69:
“That picture was a joke. I already took it down.” Though apparently, not quickly enough.

“Ms. Dumont, I don’t know if you’re aware, but Xander van der Vos was something of a celebrity here in Amsterdam. His death is all over the news, and so is that picture of you wearing his necklace. The legitimate news sites are one thing, but people are posting to X and Reddit and TikTok, and they’re jumping to their own conclusions. I’d advise you not to go searching for those comment threads, but here’s the basic gist: they say as the last person to see Xander alive—”

“I’m pretty sure the last person to see him alive was his killer.”

“Exactly my point. People are talking about you. They’re identifying you by name, and they’re wondering if you took that necklace. If you have it in your possession right now.”
The diamonds that disappear the night Xander is murdered are at the heart of The Expat Affair. Rayna doesn’t have them, of course, but that doesn’t matter. The search for them is what drives the story forward and pulls Rayna deeper into a dangerous world she doesn’t understand. And how do you give up something you don’t have? This is the question that chases Rayna throughout the whole of the book—so yes. The Expat Affair passes the Page 69 Test with plenty of sparkle.