Our Legends book club will discuss “The Husband’s Secret” by Liane Moriarty soon. I liked it and gave it four stars on Amazon. Here’s my review:
Husbands and wives have secrets. When secrets see the light of day, lives change. Some of the secrets featured in this novel are kept to protect the innocent, some to protect the guilty. The telling of those secrets shakes up the future for every person involved.
This is not a book to read in snippets. It was at first difficult to figure out all the characters, but they did eventually fall into place as lives converged…even if unknown to each other. The point-of-view changes with every chapter and sometimes in between, so it might be a good idea to jot down notes to keep straight which secret belongs to which character.
I enjoyed the way the author uses secrets as a way of pointing out that our actions and decisions affect our own lives and the lives of others, often without us realizing the ramifications. She provides plenty of dangling questions at the end of each break to keep the reader turning pages.
I particularly liked the bonus “chapter” in which the author states what would have happened if the mother hadn’t been seven minutes late; or if the girl had chosen this boyfriend over that; or if the coroner hadn’t had a cold the day he did the autopsy. I always wonder about that “the road not taken.” Here the author provides insights to what might have happened, but if it hadn’t happened, there’d be no story.
The telling of a secret may hurt and cause upheaval, but it may also be cathartic and healing. In other circumstances, secrets should remain secrets. Those torturous decisions create the tension this story and provide fodder for book discussion groups.
Jeanne Meeks ~ Fiction Author 