Tuesday, December 10, 2013

2 Top Titles: "The Husband's Secret" & "The Silent Wife"


 

Clearly I’ve been watching too much “Homeland”. Because when I found out every important political leader from every important country will be at the funeral for Nelson Mandela this morning, I got worried.

It doesn’t seem to be a good idea to have all these important people – and Oprah! – gathered together in the same place.

What if there’s some kind of terrorist event? Who will run the world then? And the Oxygen network?

I blame these paranoid thoughts on my “Homeland” obsession, but books could also be the culprit. I just finished two of them that were based on the same disturbing premise: most fellas are up to no good (and some women too!). Especially if they’re attractive, successful and good with kids!

There are four, interwoven storylines in The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty. They’re all hook you in pretty much immediately because you really like the characters – the girls and guys both – so you want to find out what’s roiling the waters of their seemingly happy, suburban lives. Let me tell you. The secret is a total shocker, one that not even paranoid me guessed!


The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison plays with the same concept. Only in this book, Harrison leads with the disturbing truth: successful therapist in her early 40s kills her own husband. Harrison spends the rest of the story showing us how it got to that point. Even though we know how it ends, the story somehow manages to be both suspenseful and gripping.

Both books ask you to rank bad choices. It’s like that ethics game where you have to rank who is the worst in terms of ethical flaw. Can good people do very bad things? Are those choices ever justified?

So many moral quandaries! The books are like an episode of “Lost” without the confusing time travel. For a good, quick read try either book. They will raise your paranoia level but not about polar bears.(Click this link to go to amazon.com to learn more or order "The Silent Wife" and "The Husband's Secret". )

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