Skip to main content

Book Review: The Husband Hour by Jamie Brenner



This book asks the questions that we all ask ourselves but have a hard time answering when it comes to our past. 

Did I make the right choice? What what if I could turn back time? What if I gave a second chance? What do I regret the most? What if I had walked away? What if...

Within the first chapter, I knew this book was going to tell an interesting story. Lauren is a young widow, devastated by her loss at only 24 years old. Her late-husband, US Hockey star and military hero, Rory Kincaid, has died in combat. They had their whole lives ahead of them.

In an attempt to hide from the world, Lauren escapes to her family's summer home in a secluded area on the Jersey Shore, away from the media buzz surrounding her husband. 

Four years later, Lauren is still at the shore, though initially her parents thought she'd eventually start over and move on. But Lauren feels safe. She's wrapped herself in quiet isolation in order to hide from the pain of the past. 





When her parents and estranged sister move back to the shore for the summer, Lauren is uncomfortable, even more so when they tell her they may be staying at the shore indefinitely. Beth and Stephanie both have secrets that are going to shatter the already shaky foundation that Lauren has built since her husband's death. 

As if her family troubles weren't enough, there's a film maker who has discovered details about Rory that he thinks will make a great documentary, so he rents a place on the shore and starts asking a lot of questions. Questions that start to make Lauren and others very uncomfortable. 

Lauren is determined to keep the memory of Rory high on a pedestal and in her heart. But the secrets that Matt's documentary are uncovering aren't what she wants to face. I was rooting for Lauren. I wanted her to heal, I wanted her to face the past but I was rooting for her to find a new path, one with a brighter future. I was so invested in her character, I felt like she was a friend in real life that I felt protective over.

There are so many interesting family dynamics in play and there are twists that will make you stop in your tracks, so be prepared. 

It's called The Husband Hour, but this book is going to stay around in my mind for much longer, probably years. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

Ruth Ware always delivers when it comes to interesting and layered characters. The Turn of the Key is a thrilling account of Rowan Caine's experience as a live-in nanny in a luxurious smart home unlike anything she has ever seen. This mystery is the epitome of the saying "if it's too good to be true, it probably is" because even though moving into the home of the Elincourts is an upgrade from her tiny apartment and dead-end job, it comes at a steep price. Every chapter, there is something suspicious that kept me wondering if anyone in this suspenseful book was telling the truth. Which, is obvious in the first page because Rowan is writing a letter to a lawyer, from jail, because she's being held for murder. Who is Rowan? Did she come into the Elincourt's lives for a reason? She should have known something was wrong on the day she interviewed, when one of the children warned her to never come back. With a house full of surveillance cameras and parents who ar

Historical Fiction Recommendations

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jennifer 📚 (@thats_what_she_read) on Jul 12, 2019 at 4:01pm PDT Raise your hand if you’re in the mood for a great  #historicalfiction  ! ⁣ randomhouse   #partner ⁣ } ⁣ The last HF I read was  # Montauk  by Nicola Harrison. It was a nice vacation! ⁣ ⁣ Here are the next two that are on my list: ⁣ TIME AFTER TIME By Lisa Grunwald (out now)⁣ A magical love story, inspired by the legend of a woman who vanished from Grand Central Terminal, sweeps readers from the 1920s to World War II and beyond. ⁣ On a clear December morning in 1937, at the famous gold clock in Grand Central Terminal, Joe Reynolds, a hardworking railroad man from Queens, meets a vibrant young woman who seems mysteriously out of place. Nora Lansing is a Manhattan socialite whose flapper clothing, pearl earrings, and talk of the Roaring Twenties don’t seem to match the bleak mood of Depression-era New York

Book Review: The Reckless Oath Me Made by Bryn Greenwood

When a young woman is facing an unsteady future, layered on top of a very troubled past, the last thing she has time for is the strange young man who speaks in Middle English and is always following her around. Zee ignores him just fine until her sister goes missing and everything in her life is uncertain and she has no choice but to trust Gentry Frank.  "Zee may not be a princess, but Gentry is an actual knight, complete with sword, armor and a code of honor. Two years ago the voices he hears in his head called him to be Zee's champion. Both shy and autistic, he's barely spoken to her since, but has kept watch, ready to come to her aid."  The layers of this book are peeled away one by one, making it a deeply emotional and transient novel. Zee's character is complicated- she is sharp, deeply scarred but unabashedly brazen and brave. What I loved about her most was how trusted her gut even when she didn't have solid ground to stand on. Her mother is a hoard