The Husband’s Secret

Title: The Husband’s Secret
Writers : Liane Moriarty
Published: 2013
Genre: Fiction
My Rating: 3 on 5

The title of the book refers to Cecilia, who plays the perfect wife and mom and who think she knows her husband like herself, and her husband’s secret which is tucked away in a letter addressed to her with instructions ‘To be read only in the event of my death’. Cecilia happens to find this letter in the attic and a casual mention of this over phone to her away-from-home husband elicits extreme reaction from him forcing Cecilia to read it before her husband can snatch the letter away from her.

What follows is the revelation of the secret and how it affects the other two women in the book. Tess finds out that her husband has been cheating on her and decides to walk away from her marriage and off to her mom’s house. Rachel lost her daughter when she was in her teens and still cannot come to terms with it. She has transformed her world to revolve around her grandson but is told the shocking news that her son and his family would be moving to another country, hence shattering Rachel’s world all over again.

The plot is interesting and the book jumps into the secret letter part from the get-go. Tess’s part moves relatively slowly and is the least interesting part. There are additional characters in the story like the sports teacher who is Tess’s ex-boyfriend and who happens to be Cecilia’s daughter’s crush and who is suspected by Rachel as her daughter’s killer. There are many things which overlaps these three women’s lives and full credit to the author to come up with such intertwining characters.

The book does not have superlative writing or thought-provoking elements, but the plot and the characters tug at your heart and you are eager to know what happens in their lives. This book is great for some light reading on a long flight.