Christian White, The Wife and the Widow

About: A wife's investigation into her husband's disappearance uncovers long-dead secrets on an island off Australia.

Verdict: The story is told in alternating chapters by two women involved, one way or another, in the disappearance of John Keddie. The mystery is appealing. When Keddie doesn’t come home from a trip abroad, his wife finds out that the purpose of that trip is just one of the things he kept from her. But the book's timeline is quite confusing, and once I had to start plotting the characters' relationships on the back of a napkin, I lost much of my enthusiasm. (I suppose how things interconnect is probably the big reveal the author was going for, but I found that mystery more annoying than compelling.) My main issue, though, is that one of the main characters changes so much across a period of time that it's hard to imagine they're the same person.

Publication: 2020 · 352 pages
Rating: 3.5 stars