Synopsis
It's the perfect love story.
Lily meets Ed at a party, and on their second date, he proposes. She's a lawyer, he's an up-and-coming artist. They own a small but beautiful flat in London and mix with all the right people.
But Lily has a secret. Something from her past, that is soon to collide with her present. And she thinks her new husband is hiding something too...
The vows they made will soon be tested to the very limits.
'Till death us do part...'
Lisa's Review - 2.5 out of 5 stars
I usually write my reviews soon after finishing a book, but with this one I finished over a day ago and I am still struggling to decide how I felt about this story.
My Husbands Wife is a book set out in two halves, the first half flashing back to fifteen years ago, and the second jumping to the present. Fifteen years ago, Lily meets Ed, and they have a whirlwind romance and are married very quickly. They set up home, just as Lily gets her first big case as a solicitor. This case alone is enough to change the rest of Lilys life. Ed, a struggling artist, already has his flaws, but when Lily accidentally offers their services to help their neighbour with her daughter, Carla, Ed finds his passion again when it comes to painting the little girl. But Carla has problems too, her mother has a lot of secrets if her own too.
Flash forward to the present and everything has changed. Lily is highly successful, but there is a reason why, and it isn't a good one. Her and Ed have a son with autism and they struggle with him. Ed is drinking heavily. His painting of little Carla sold, but after the high he struggled again to sell more. After being taken back to Italy as a child, Carla is back, back to get revenge on her mothers ex lover, and after Ed and Lily for money they made from the painting of her. Things spiral, lies are told, secrets unfold, and there is a murder to solve.
The problem with this book is that it only gets really good at about 70% in. The first almost three quarters of this book were a hard slog, I struggled to keep going at times and it was slow. I can't pinpoint why, as it is all needed and important to the end of the book, but by the last quarter is when it picked up. It got exciting, it all flowed better and there were so many twists and turns to keep the pages turning that I really do wish the pace of it had picked up earlier so I could give it a higher rating. Maybe the fact that it was incredibly difficult to sympathise or relate to a single character in the book, even by the end I can't say that my opinion of any of them had changed. It may just have been that the first half was very long and filled out with some things that probably could have been cut out and all the better story telling was saved for the end. I did almost quit this book and mark it as unable to finish, which would have been a shame then as I would have missed the best bits.
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