Friday, June 17, 2022

The Love of My Life


This book by Rosie Walsh will keep you guessing until the end. I felt like it dragged out the big reveal far too long. However, reviewers were much more complimentary. The Washington Post's Maureen Corrigan calls this a "masterful domestic thriller with a doozy of a plot,"  and I totally respect Ms. Corrigan's reviews. Corrigan goes on to say, "a classic example of the “I married a stranger” domestic suspense plot — with a twist. Usually, the partner with a secret triggers suspicion in us canny readers early on. ...But, Emma Merry Bigelow, the enigmatic heroine of Rosie Walsh’s “The Love of My Life,” seems so funny, warm, compassionate and kind that we readers root for her — even though we learn fairly quickly that she’s living under an assumed name and harbors a host of other secrets, something her adoring husband, Leo, doesn’t know about. Walsh just may have written the first domestic suspense novel in which the deceitful spouse is also a genuinely nice person. Maybe." Emma is an "intertidal biologist" and husband Leo is an obituary writer, which is how he discovers that the woman he is still madly in love with after 7 years of marriage isn't who he thought she was--at least not entirely.  He begins digging and fears he has uncovered infidelity and a criminal background. But it's not what he thinks.

Similarly, Kirkus calls the book "a propulsive thriller with heart that will keep readers guessing." Publishers Weekly calls it a "heartbreaking thriller" and agrees that it gets off to a slow start, but concludes  that it " builds to an emotionally raw yet satisfying conclusion."

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