Book Review of My Husband’s Secret by Karen Clarke

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A battle over a man who can’t remember, between two women who are both hiding the truth.

 

This novel is billed as a romantic thriller and it is, but it’s much better than that billing might suggest.

Two female protagonists clash over a man who’s lost his memory, and the story is seen through the eyes of each woman in turn, but knowing their thoughts leads the reader to both share and try and choose between their mistaken conclusions. The reader is actually given all the information needed to work out what is really going on; the author relies on our cultural conditioning to make the plot twists shocking rather than predictable and this works so well that I am sure the lessons won’t be wasted.

The story reaches a shocking climax on the North York Moors (accurately depicted as cold, wet and squidgy underfoot rather than romantic) which results in something resembling an Icelandic Happy Ending in which everyone decides to live with the bad things that have happened rather than involve the authorities. But the story does not end there, and goes on to explore the consequences of this and the actual ending really is a shock!

My four star recommendation is because the bridge between those two final shocks is not quite as good as it could be. But in general this is a much better novel than I expected it to be, given the way it was presented and it was only a couple of slightly clumsy pages away from five stars.

My Husband’s Secret by Karen Clarke is published by HQ on the 30^th of June 2022.