Lost in a Good Book

Published: 1st April 2013 (print)/1st April, 2013 (audio)
Publisher: Harper Perennial /Bolinda Audio
Pages: 416/11 Discs (13 hours 49 minutes)
Narrator: Caroline Lee
Format: Audiobook
Genre: Fiction
★   ★  – 2 Stars

At the heart of The Husband’s Secret is a letter that’s not meant to be read

My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I’ve died…

Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret—something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive. . . .

Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all—she’s an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia—or each other—but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.

Acclaimed author Liane Moriarty has written a gripping, thought-provoking novel about how well it is really possible to know our spouses—and, ultimately, ourselves.

Note: Possible spoilers ahead, maybe

Liane Moriarty and I have a strange relationship. My affection for her books can vary depending on the story and this is one of those books were my affection was waning. Which is a shame because I can see what Moriarty was trying to achieve, I just felt that it could have been a lot stronger in the execution.

There are multiple characters telling this story, their stories happening side by side until their threads start coming together. In terms of style, the writing is clever, small discoveries and snippets of information means this mystery is a slow reveal and characters know more than the reader so all we can do is wait until their secrets are revealed even further. The contents of the letter are the driving mystery in the start and when the contents finally come to light, the consequences unfold through the remaining chapters.

We get to know these three women that this letter will affect and as we delve deeper into their own personal lives and histories there is a lot to take in. The connecting moment between the three takes a while, and in that time you have to retain a lot of information and remember who’s who and where they fit in connection to others. Cecelia still felt like the main player in this story, though the others get their share on the page, whether it was because it all came back to Cecilia’s family it felt that way, or maybe I just liked Cecilia’s character and her story stuck with more than the others.

There is an element of tragedy and certainly an irony which would suit any crime show these days. I found it was predictable and drawn out without the real interest to sustain it, but I admired Moriarty’s attempt to create such a story and to invoke these dilemmas from Cecilia and the other characters. The question of what would you do if faced with these decisions was the goal for the reader, to make us think and challenge our own conceptions. I can’t say I thought about what I would do but I disagreed with the ending so maybe that’s my answer?

I won’t go into detail but there was a line in here that hit me that I need to take about. I was listening to this as an audiobook and even after the secrets have been revealed and it’s gone in a few unexpected and expected ways, there came the line “I loved her, then she laughed at me”. This line stood out to me so much, because it’s The Line. The Margaret Atwood line about men laughing and women being murdered. Moriarty’s book didn’t seem to have the right severity to have a line like this in it. It was filled with grief and drama, but it never seemed severe.  That is the tone this book could have gone with, this tragedy and secrecy could have been made to have a greater impact, instead it falls flat and with an ending which I couldn’t get behind and one I felt was a strange solution to the characters we’d been following for the entirety of this book.

You can purchase The Husband’s Secret via the following

Booktopia | Book Depository | Audible

Amazon | Amazon Aust | Wordery

Angus & Robertson | Dymocks

 Fishpond | QBD