Rachel´s Random Resources Book Tour: Her Husband´s Lie by Amanda Reynolds

One happy couple, Nicole and Matthew. Middle class, in love, trusting each other. They have a beautiful house, a safe and predictable everyday life and a healthy and charming daughter. The perfect family picture for everyone to envy and emulate. And then suddenly, in just one week, Nicole´s world is getting upside down. Matthew disappears lefting Nicole with a huge riddle to solve: who is actually her husband to whom she gave her heart and full trust?

As in the case of previous books by Amanda Reynolds I had the chance to read and review, Her Husband´s Lie is advancing slowly but firmly towards a revelation towards the end of the book, and I really appreciated the ways in which the suspense is created through the pieces of smoking mirrors that are obliterating the truth. 

Crime psychological thrillers evolving in a family environment may be a genre apart those days, and it´s justly so, as the everyday life may be the perfect unexpected source of surprises, as things are rarely indeed so glossy as they may look like at first sight. 

In Her Husband´s Lie though, there is an unique game of emotions that are built through the story, which involves the reader into the story in a very direct and brutal way. You may encounter a lot of untrustworthy characters, hard to like, but they are actually the salt and pepper of the book. There are hardly likeable characters in this book and many of them do also act in a very unempathic egoistic way. But, how could you write a great thriller with good, likeable characters, after all?

Some of the characters, particularly Nic, may act so erratically at times, that it is very hard to show any solidarity towards her. As for Matt, it´s impossible to give him any excuse, as he seems the perfect soulless manipulator. 

The timeline is very dense, so that you can hardly realize that the action is actionally taking place within few days, not weeks, how it feels at times like. The back and forth from present to the past, as fragments of Nic´s (mostly traumatic) past are shared adds even more weight to the timing of events and the story in general. The ambiance - both of the main location and geographically, in general, is not the strongest point of the book, in my opinion, but there is already enough tension in the air.

As the ways in which the story evolves from the very beginning - a relatively bourgeois family setting is shortly degenerating in a chain of deceit and lies - it was very hard to predict what will happen next. Thus, I felt compelled to follow up carefully every single detail of the events, hoping that somehow near the end, all those pieces will come up together to give the right key to solve the riddle. The fact that almost all characters do have something to hide from the police investigators - an arrestable offence, after all - may make the reader think that there are many things at stake that we might imagine.

For lovers of psychological thrillers, this is a very inspired choice for anyone looking to an eventful read, with many psychological turns and densely emotional as well. Once starting the book is very hard to put it down, as you are getting more and more curious to discover how far some characters went in pursuing their secret dark aims. Actually, very far.

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered as part of the book tour but the opinions are, as usual, my own