My Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Jodi and Todd have been together for 20 years. They live in Chicago in an upscale condo with an enviable view of the waterfront. Todd owns a construction company and regularly cheats on Jodi. Jodi is a psychologist, is good at keeping up appearances, and loves the life she has with Todd despite knowing that he is unfaithful - avoidance of the topic is the way she deals with his infidelity. The story is told from both Jodi and Todd's points of view alternating between "Her" and "Him" chapters up until the point of Jodi's murderous act and Todd's untimely demise. Don't worry, no spoiler alert is needed here, as that fact is revealed in the second paragraph of the book...
"She assumes, without having thought about it, that things will go on indefinitely in their imperfect yet entirely acceptable way. In other words, she is deeply unaware that her life is now peaking, that her youthful resilience - which her twenty-year marriage to Todd Gilbert has been slowly eroding - is approaching a final stage of disintegration, that her notions about who she is and how she ought to conduct herself are far less stable than she supposes, given that a few short months are all it will take to make a killer out of her."
The remainder of the book is solely from Jodi's perspective - Will she get caught? Did she manage to pull off the perfect crime? Will she unravel? Did she make a mistake?
My actual rating of this book would have been closer to a 3.5, but since Goodreads does not provide a mechanism for half point ratings and having to choose a full star rating, I tipped slightly more towards 4 stars. I was fully engaged from the first page - despite being initially perturbed that a major outcome of the story was revealed in the opening paragraphs, but I figured there must be good reason. I figured correctly - there was a lot more to the story (a lot more than I am mentioning here). I really enjoyed how the story unfolded between the "Her" and "Him" points of view, and in the end I was not disappointed.
This is my seventh book read for the 7th Annual Canadian Book Challenge.
Interesting book, enjoyed the review. I had been curious about this book, this was useful.
ReplyDeleteThanks Tracy...I'm glad you found the review helpful!
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