My Husband's Wife by Jane Corry
| My Husband's Wife by Jane Corry | |
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| Category: General Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Zoe Morris
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| Summary: How much do you know about the person you marry? How about your neighbours? Your colleagues? As a lawyer, Lily knows all is not always as it seems, but can she cope with the surprise revelations to come? | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 544 | Date: August 2016 |
| Publisher: Penguin | |
| ISBN: 978-0241256480 | |
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Autumn 2000. Newly married lawyer Lily and her artist husband Ed have a small apartment in London. Fresh from the honeymoon, they're still settling in to their new roles, and their neighbour Francesca and her 9 year old daughter Carla help to take the pressure off a little bit. Autumn 2013. Lily and Ed, still a lawyer and an artist, are older now. In their 40s. Life has changed them. Lily has done very well for herself, now partner in a law firm, working all hours to provide for the family. Carla hasn't done too badly either. Now a graduate, she is all grown up and looking to follow in the footsteps of her former neighbour.
My husband's wife. The very title had me intrigued. What does it mean? By this time next year I will be my husband's wife but it would be a weird way to describe myself. We may miss the wedding of Ed and Lily at the start, meeting them as we do a few weeks later, but there are a number of other engagements and weddings in this story. It's to be expected in a story that spans over 16 years by the end, but it does beg the question: who is talking about to whom when one of the characters utters the phrase? This is not the only complicated thing in this story. A legal drama, a whodunit, a story of love and loss, it has so many angles, neatly weaving from one to another leaving you constantly guessing, constantly wanting more.
I work in health rather than the law, but this book almost had me wanting to change careers. Lily may not be the most confident of lawyers at the start, but her first murder case soon changes this, and she becomes a hot commodity, the one people want to hire. Only one legal case gets a lot of attention here, and I did wonder where the story would go next as there were still lots of pages left as the verdict came in, but that's the way life goes. Priorities come and go, and work and family sometimes have to battle for your attention.
The story moves from Lily's point of view to Carla's, and I especially liked getting inside the head of a child who sees things in black and white without the inevitable shades of grey. It was initially hard to reconcile 9 year old Carla with 22 year old Carla because we don't live the intervening years with her, but she soon re-establishes herself and you can see how the girl she was has influenced the woman she has become.
I very much enjoyed this story for the slightly less than 48 hours it took me to scoot through it. Everything about it fitted perfectly, from the before and after characters to the ongoing intrigue into just exactly what was going on and who was telling the truth. Even at the end I'm not sure we fully understood, because there are some secrets you take with you to your grave. This is a long book at over 500 pages, but it never felt like it. The pages just fly by as the story gallops on, in and out of London, in and out of court, in and out of Love. The story is as much a riddle as the title is, but it's a riddle I couldn't wait to solve.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending us a copy which I thoroughly relished to the very last page. Without implying that I may have, ahem, been doing my research before I become the second Mrs DeWinter next year, I can also recommend The First Wife by Emily Barr and The First Wife by Erica Spindler.
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You can read more book reviews or buy My Husband's Wife by Jane Corry at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy My Husband's Wife by Jane Corry at Amazon.com.
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