The Bride's Secret by Rosie Walker
Genre: Psychological thriller
Read: 3rd June 2025
Published: 4th June 2025
★★★★ 4 stars
DESCRIPTION:
I gaze into my fiancé’s eyes as I toast to our love, relieved that tomorrow we’ll be married. After we say ‘I do’, no one from my past will ever be able to find me.
On our wedding day, I wake with a smile. Today I get to marry the love of my life. He may not know everything about me, but Robert and I fit perfectly together. I can’t wait to put on my perfect white gown and walk down the aisle.
In just a few hours, I’ll be his wife. And my secret will be hidden forever.
I turn to wake him up, but his eyes don’t open. There’s blood smeared across the white bed sheets, across his body, across my own trembling hands. My fiancé is dead.
It’s only then that I realize there’s a knife in my hand…
If you love Gone Girl, The Housemaid and The Girl on the Train, you won’t be able to put this absolutely gripping and addictive psychological thriller down. It’s sure to keep you turning the pages until late into the night.
MY THOUGHTS:
They say I killed him...but only I know the truth...or do I...?
Bride-to-be Maeve lovingly toasts her husband-to-be Robert on the eve of their wedding in front of their close family and friends. Tomorrow is their big day and after three decades as a lifelong happily unmarried woman, Maeve cannot wait. Robert is the love of her life and she cannot wait to be his wife. What could go wrong?
So when Maeve goes to sleep on the eve of their wedding, she wakes in the early hours just before dawn excited at the prospect of the day ahead. What she doesn't expect is to find her beloved fiance laying dead beside her covered in blood with wounds that she, as a martial arts instructor, would know how to inflict. Maeve knows that justice is rarely just and that with the scene before her, she will be arrested for a crime she knows she did not commit. Or did she? Maeve has battled with sleepwalking all her life. Did she do this to Robert in her sleep and not know about it? Either way, she isn't responsible and in a moment of madness she hurriedly packs a few items and escapes to a remote cottage. There, she attempts to come to terms with her grief whilst trying to unpick all that had happened and who could possibly be responsible for Robert's brutal murder.
In the alternating chapters we meet Gilly who is happily married to successful dentist Callum with two beautiful children, Jake (9) and Polly (6). Whilst she is mostly a stay-at-home-mum, she also volunteers for a mental health helpline. The job is thankless and arduous at times but she comes away feeling as though she has made a difference in others' lives at times when they have needed it most. One such caller has kept her on the line for over an hour, saying nothing and only sobbing before hanging up. When the caller calls again, it's pure luck that Gilly picks up the call (which are randomly allocated) and recognises the same sobbing she endured just the day or so before. But this time the caller speaks - to thank her for being there. And in that moment Gilly knows she has made a difference to this person, whoever she may be. So when she violates procedure and insinuates when she will next be on shift at the helpline, Gilly had no idea of the chain of events that she would unleash taking us all on a wild journey through the Scottish highlands.
Two women - two different stories. How do they intersect?
Both women had a sense of hopelessness about them and yet one was doing something with her life while the other drove me mad with her inner self flagellation. I found it hard to sympathise with Maeve - apart from the fact that she was innocent and obviously being framed, so why did she flee? It only made her look guilty! But as we delved into her past and her backstory, we learnt why she did what she did, even though I thought her decision to run was stupid. However, if faced with such a prospect, I may well do the same. One never knows what one would do until they walk a mile in another's shoes. Now Gilly, I felt a whole load of sympathy for. Yes, she made a stupid decision in revealing something of herself to her caller which was not a smart move but Gilly had an air of naivete about her. Maeve does not. She is a strong woman.
The title had me a little puzzled. What exactly is the secret she is carrying? And is it enough to change the course of her life forever? Moving forward, both Maeve and Gilly wonder who they can really trust. After all, someone has surely betrayed both women. The question is - who? And what do they have in store for the women?
Two women - two vastly different lives and stories. How they connect is the biggest twist of the book - one which I easily worked out for myself as I did with the "who" behind it all (I don't think that was too hard to work out). But it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the story. As long as it's entertaining, I'm happy. In fact, I quite enjoy it when I am able to work out the twists - especially if they aren't predictable ones that leave others speechless. I don't look for the obvious but rather what isn't. Then I look for possible links that may be there or just alluded to. The major plot twist wasn't an easy guess so prepared to be shocked. The "who" wasn't hard to figure out but it is still surprising for those who don't expect it.
The ending chapters were a bit of a confused mess as the reader is thrown various pieces of information that we have to decipher which is reliable and which isn't...leaving us second guessing everything. Just who can these women really trust?
Another addictive read by Rosie Walker that is equally hard to put down.
I would like to thank #RosieWalker, #Netgalley and #Bookouture for an ARC of #TheBridesSecret in exchange for an honest review.
MEET THE AUTHOR:
She also has an undergraduate degree in Psychology from Lancaster University, where she learned how to pull an all-nighter to hit a deadline right at the last minute.
She lives in Edinburgh with her husband Kevin, daughter Elsie and their dog Bella.
Social Media links:
Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads
No comments:
Post a Comment