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Liane Moriarty: The Husband's Secret

 This was yet another book club read. This is not usually my first choice in books to pick up.

The Husband's Secret is a gripping tale of lies and intrigue. Cecilia is an extremely successful woman. She has the absolute perfect life: three girls who light her life, an adoring if forgetful husband, she's amazing at selling Tupperware, and she even is the PTA president at her school. Tess thought she was happily married to Will, before Will tells her that he's in love with her cousin and basically best friend Felicity. Tess uproots her son and moves back to Sydney to live with her mother at the revelation. Rachel works at the same school Cecilia's girls (and now Tess's son) go to: St. Angela's. Rachel is the secretary and basically keeps the place afloat. Rachel's daughter was murdered twenty years ago, and she has no idea who did it, but she certainly suspects Connor Whitby the school's P.E. teacher. These women's lives are intricately linked by one unopened letter in Cecilia's attic. What dark secret does it hold?

As I said, this is NOT my usual fare, so perhaps take my opinions with a grain of salt.

I did not like this book. The only thing that I thought the author did well was create a compelling story. I wanted to finish it to see what exactly was going to happen, but other than that, I didn't enjoy it at all.

Let me break down what I didn't like a little.

1. The characters are all pretty shallow. I got tired of Rachel who while yes, had lost her daughter in a horribly unspeakable way, seemed unwilling to try and heal. Perhaps it was the lack of closure, I don't know, but it got tiring. I didn't like the way she treated her daughter-in-law or her son. Her son practically didn't exist to her. Tess was an OK person at least, but she was so whiney, and she wouldn't listen to anyone. She gets into this sudden fling with Connor, the boyfriend she didn't even remember having. Cecilia was the character I liked the most, but I still didn't really like her. She seemed shallow - being proud of herself for making an insignificant conversation with Rachel about her daughter. The novel rotates among the three women, and I felt that it was clumsily done. I have ready true masters at character rotations, and I usually like that model. This book did not do it well. You rotated at random times, Rachel didn't get a lot of time and then suddenly did, and then Tess's story or Cecilia's story seemed lacking. It just felt unplanned and clumsy (that really is the best word I can think of).

2. I didn't like that every single chapter ended on a cliffhanger. That got exhausting fast.

3. Tess's story is basically irrelevant. Her life is NOT intricately tied up in all of the drama between Cecilia and Rachel. The only purpose her story serves is to give a slight bit of depth to Connor Whitby. So why write it from Tess's perspective and not Connor's? I felt that her chapters were wasted writing, especially toward the end when everything unraveled.

4. I was kicking myself at how obvious the ending was. I should have seen so many things that happened. Cecilia once saw this little boy get hit by a car, and she was fixated on that, so naturally, her daughter is hit by a car in the climax of the novel. It was pretty obvious once you went to Rachel's story that Connor was not going to be the killer, and that it was probably John-Paul, the only other male really connected to the story. Even before Cecilia opens the letter, I wondered if that was who did it. These little things were clumsy attempts at foreshadowing. Again, I feel that I've read masters at that, and Moriarty is not one of them.

Overall, I felt that the whole book, while compelling, was shallow, and honestly, I mostly kept reading to get it off my currently reading shelf on Goodreads.

I rated this book ⭐⭐

There is quite a bit of content in this book.





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