My Husband's Wife

by Jane Corry.

I was quite hesitant, whether to give this book 3 or 4 stars.

It kept me on the hook, and that's a good reason to give all 4, yet the twists and turns of the plot made me want to ask: "Really?... Does everything have to be so messed up? What happened to good old simple stories, those ones where enough secrets and thrill and mystery but without all those "special" effects that make you think you are reading a textbook chapter on clinical perversions... " And those moments were enough to strip an extra star off.

I found that the author tried too hard to make the characters to be "complex". You know, there's "having issues" and then there is being a full time twisted. Moderation makes less to be more.
Like too much pepper in your dinner - instead of making it sharp and tasty, it blocks the flavours and gives you just burning sensation.
Same here, instead of adding mystery or intrigue, it made the plot look a bit ridiculous and inconsistent at times.

So it all starts quite simple. Lily is a solicitor, trying to build her career. She seems to be determinant to keep going strong, yet she is insecure and still affected by losing her brother, Daniel, years ago. Lily meets Ed, an artist. After brief dating they get married. This gives them both a faint hope to start afresh and make their lives go "right". But the marriage does not feel right off-set. And it is not. Ed seems to be depressed, uninspired, using Lily as a patch to get over his ex-girlfriend, Davina...

Then Lily meets Joe, her imprisoned client, who wants to fight to prove his innocence and appeal his murder case. Is it going to be that simple? Will Lily's carrier be at stake?...
Or maybe something heart warming will blossom from Joe's similarities to Daniel?... Will Lily save him? Or will she have to save herself?...

Next door to Ed and Lily, there lives Francesca with her little daughter Carla.
Francesca is a single mother who fled Italy to avoid shame after failing to secure a marriage and had a child on her own. Carla is a very nice, cute child, yet there is a strong bone in her. Carla is too smart for her age. Is it just the consequences of being an "unusual" child, being rejected by her peers in school? Or is Carla capable of being manipulative and calculating beyond her young age?...

Fast-forward some years and you find the same faces. But not all the same.
Francesca is back in Italy with Carla. Ed has secret buyer who pays a staggering amount of money for little Carla's portrait... Lily is partner in her law firm. And a mum to Ed's son Tom... Isn't this enough to call a happy ending... Apparently not.

I found the beginning of the story a bit to dwelled on the same issues.
Going around in circles with Ed-Davina line was getting boring and was too obvious.
Same with Francesca and Larry. It was just going nowhere for most of the part.

I found Lily's character too plain, yet too overloaded with issues. Too much attached to her brother's death, and all those issues with guilt, intimacy and so on, swing the whole lot into "too much information" side. Perhaps, if the same was laid down in more subtle, emotional, rather than physical, way, it would have played to the book's advantage.
For instance, it was great to see some metamorphosis after years have past, and watch the transformation in Lily's appearance, yet her inner transformation somewhat overlooked, at least it felt to me that way.
I'd love Ed's character to be more developed as well, but his presence in the book felt merely as a background to Lily and Carla.

In the further storyline, time has passed and pieces have fallen into the right places. All plain and simple. But things have never been more complicated... Or shall I say, a bit overly complicated?

Read it, and you'll see what I mean...
You might like this book. Or you might not. But you will want to read it all.