She Treads Softly: My Other Husband

Friday, August 18, 2023

My Other Husband

My Other Husband by Dorothy Koomson
8/18/22; 432 pages
Hatchette Book Group

My Other Husband by Dorothy Koomson is a highly recommended thriller.

The novel opens with Cleo Forsum Pryce being charged with attempted murder but she is not guilty. Then chapters jump back in time to weeks earlier when she begins to take steps to ruin her life. These chapters alternate with chapters set in 1996 when she was a student and best friends with Trina. Weeks before the charge, Cleo is divorcing her husband. and is going to end the successful TV series 'The Baking Detective' based on her book. She is sabotaging her own life before her past secrets catch up with her. Now people around her are starting to get hurt and someone is trying to frame her for murder.

The alternating chapters work well to contrast Cleo then and now. She was fun, happy, and carefree and now is obviously carrying a heavy burden. The characters are fully realized and resemble real people, even the antagonists. It is revealed why Cleo is sabotaging her life through the look into her past.

However, the novel does have a a very slow pace after the attention-grabbing opening and doesn't really pick up until after the half-way point. The second half is intense, full of plot twists and suspense. It is a story about obsession, but is also full of murders and revenge. The final denouement is very satisfying. All in all, My Other Husband is a very good thriller but the slow pacing in the first half lessened my enjoyment.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of the Hatchette Book Group via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.