My Husband's Secrets by Louise Sharland
Genre: Domestic thriller, Domestic drama, Suspense
Read: 26th May 2022
Published: 26th May 2022
★★★ 3 stars
DESCRIPTION:
On the evening of their wedding anniversary, Ali and Matthew are involved in a fatal car accident.
Grief-stricken, Ali can’t bring herself to believe that her beloved Matthew is gone…
The smell of his aftershave lingers in their bedroom. His voice still rings out on their answerphone. She sees his face in the eyes of strangers.
But as the months pass, and her family and friends rally round, Ali starts to uncover secrets that Matthew kept from her.
Did she really know her husband as well as she thought she did? And why can’t she shake the feeling that somehow, somewhere, he is still alive?
MY THOUGHTS:
This book took me something like three days to read, which is an inordinate amount of time for me really. But as promising as the premise was, MY HUSBAND'S SECRETS didn't quite hit the mark. What began as a compelling and intriguing prologue, pretty much fizzled out into an average story that left me somewhat confused by the end.
Ali and her husband Matthew are involved in an horrific car accident after leaving their third wedding anniversary party. The couple left the event rowing and continued their arguement in the car until they plunged from the road and into the river. Ali was pulled from the wreck but Matthew was unable to be saved.
Three months have since passed and Ali suffers from injuries sustained in the crash as well as amnesia leading up to and surrounding the accident. She remembers seeing her daughter Emma and husband Matthew arguing at the party; she remembers Matthew whispering something in her ear as they left; she remembers screaming at him...but she remembers nothing about why this was so. She does not remember what Matthew said to her as they left the party nor does she remember why they were arguing. All she remembers is flashes of being pulled from the freezing cold water and rushed off to hospital. She had no idea that Matthew never made it.
Since Matthew's body has never been recovered, Ali is convinced he is still alive and is either in hiding somewhere or has amnesia and forgotten who he is and where he lives. She simply cannot believe he is dead.
And then she stumbles across something that shakes her world to its core. Did Matthew die in the accident that night? Or is he really in hiding, waiting to make his next move?
Determined to uncover the truth herself, Ali launches her own investigation into Matthew's disappearance despite her injuries from which she is still recovering. All the while taking comfort from her first husband Rory's positive affirmations that keep her going. Truth be told, I thought Ali missed Rory far more than Matthew. She sure talked about him a whole lot at least.
MY HUSBAND'S SECRET is my first read my Louise Sharland and I'm not entirely sure if I would race out to grab another. I wanted to like it but I found it decidedly lacking and the pace that it started off with soon fizzled out pretty fast. The characters are mixed and I can't say I liked them a whole lot. The story is a little predictable but not too much so. I just found it a bit of a non-event. By the time I reached the end I was feeling "Whew! I'm glad that's over" as well as "Is that it?"
Overall, MY HUSBAND'S SECRET is not an earth-shattering thrill-ride of a thriller. As I said, it begins with an intriguing prologue but soon fizzles out fairly fast and not much happens between then and the ending. It was overall an OK read, but not great.
I would like to thank #LouiseSharland, #NetGalley and #AvonBooks for an ARC of #MyHusbandsSecrets in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
She began writing short stories when her children were little and her work has appeared in magazines, anthologies and online.
In 2010 she won the Woman and Home Short Story Competition and her entry Black Rock, subsequently appeared in an anthology, The Best Little Book Club in Town (Orion 2011), alongside writers such as Lee Child, Ruth Rendell and JoJo Moyes.
In 2019 Louise won The Big Issue Crime Writing competition.
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