“Some secrets are meant to stay secret forever.”

Author: Liane Moriarty

Do you ever really know another person? What haunts their past, what they are capable of, what keeps them up at night?

Cecilia Fitzpatrick thinks she knows everything there is to know about her perfect husband, John-Paul, and her three daughters. As a matter of fact, she is secretly longing for a bit of drama, something to take her out of herself, to spice up the day, to infuse some heady emotions into her life.

As they say, be careful what you wish for, it might come true.

One night, Cecilia finds an old letter from John-Paul hidden in the attic. On the front, he has written that it must not be opened until after his death. Why would he write such a letter? What could it contain? Perhaps just something sentimental? Then again, perhaps it’s something that will upend all of their lives.

Meanwhile, Tess, her husband (Will), and Tess’ cousin (and life-long best friend) are doing well together in their start-up business. Everything is perfect, until Tess’ husband and cousin ask her to sit down for a talk. They didn’t mean it to happen . . . they say . . . but they fell in love with each other. Could she just, you know, look the other way?

And finally, Rachel Crowley, an elderly woman whose daughter was murdered as a teenager. Rachel feels guilty, because she has never been able to give her remaining child, her son, the attention and love he deserves. Perhaps its because the killer was never caught. But she knows who it is. She sees him every day, and she hates him.

Secrets, betrayals, love found and love lost, love misunderstood and love withheld. All of these, and more, will draw together these hurting people in an explosive story that takes the normal stuff of everyday life and turns it upside down. Eventually, the lives of the three main women will intertwine, some tangentially (Tess) and some directly (Cecilia and Rachel) to create a full story.

Each story starts off segmented, with Cecilia’s story being the best and most impactful. She is a successful wife and mother, runs a Tupperware business, and is the boisterous busybody who will corner you and talk for hours. She’s not the kind of woman who has to face dark secrets, who will have to learn to deal with what John-Paul has done and what she is now drawn into. Her oscillating emotions, her conflicted feelings, and her desire to protect her family, whatever the cost, all dance together, creating an emotional, believable mix that leaves us breathlessly questioning: What would I do, in that case? Cecila’s story, and her husband’s secret, is the showstopper in The Husband’s Secret and the epicenter around which the other two stories revolve.

Image by Calla Negra from Pixabay

Tess’ story is more ordinary. The secret here is, sadly, one that we see repeated often in the lives of those around us: the ramifications of infidelity. The complicating factor here is how Tess has seen her overweight cousin who, now that she has lost weight and gained confidence, is a threat. Sidenote: this is amazingly fat shaming, although it’s evident that the author means well and is trying to be empathetic. It just really, really fails and soon gets hard to read and awkward. Just because someone is “fat” does not mean they have no chances for love and relationships in life and must, therefore, become the sidekick of a skinny friend, only to come into their own, evil villain style, after successfully shedding the pounds.

This story is also emotional, of course, especially because Tess is conflicted. How can she, a child of divorce, subject her young son to the same? How did she not see her cousin and best friend as her own person? She treated her like a sidekick, and in some ways, the fault shows her casual cruelty, but in many others, there is a deep-seated heartbreak here. How could her lifelong best friend happily steal her husband and shatter her world?

It’s easy to root for Tess and hate Felicity (the cousin) and Will (the husband), yet this story is the least essential to the narrative. It really only shows elements of the other two stories in the background and could easily have been pulled from The Husband’s Secret and given its own book. It does, however, pick up on the end moral: “marriage is hard” and you have to work at. The story is against going out and falling in love again, but instead champions couples working through extreme difficulties and hurdles to find true love. It’s pat, of course, but true.

And finally, we have Rachel. She was perhaps the most multifaceted of the characters. At times, we deeply sympathized with her. At other times, we wanted to shake her for rejecting her son’s love, for ignoring his grief, and for treating her daughter-in-law so terribly. Rachel’s arc was the least believable, and the end solution, given with the benedictive “all’s well” aplomb, did not fit Rachels’ rage and early actions in the story, hitting one of the few sour notes in an otherwise tear-jerking story.

The end, as with most Moriarity books, shatters the realism by giving us a happily-ever-after that isn’t 100% justified. Cecilia and John-Paul make sense, but Tess should have happily left Will (his excuses were pathetic), and Rachel’s final action did not match something extreme that she had done just a few pages prior. Still, I enjoyed the experience of reading about these people, thinking about these topics, and getting extremely emotional on everyone’s behalf. So far, The Husband’s Secret is one of my favorite Moriarity books. I can’t wait to pick up another one.

 

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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