Shortly after her honeymoon, Lily gets assigned her first case as a lawyer: appealing the conviction of a man, Joe, who was convicted of murdering his girlfriend. Socially awkward and good with numbers and data, Joe reminds Lily of her brother, and she finds herself feeling a connection with him despite her determination to keep their relationship professional. Lily’s husband Ed is an aspiring artist, and despite being newly married, the couple is already becoming emotionally distant and Lily is beginning to fear that Ed is cheating on her with his ex. Down the hall from Lily and Ed live nine-year-old Carla and her mother. When Lily agrees to take care of Carla on weekends when her mother is at work, she unwittingly lets the girl into the secrets of her marriage, and twelve years later, Carla returns to Lily’s home to seek revenge.

My Husband’s Wife is an exciting and compelling thriller about the ways in our experiences in childhood can affect us all our lives. I especially love the character of Lily, who started off an an overweight, plain, insecure woman but then developed into a formidable force in the legal world. Her jealousy at the beginning over Ed’s ex-girlfriend was a bit much, and it was only as more of the characters were revealed later on that I realized where her insecurity was coming from. I couldn’t quite understand Joe’s appeal to Lily, as I found him an untrustworthy manipulator from the beginning, but I think Corry did a good job of revealing later on why his similarities to Lily’s brother had such an effect on her.

The book takes its time in unveiling the various truths behind each character’s experience, and as a result, my sympathies switched between the characters throughout a lot of the book. The ending had a few too many twists in the reveals, which is an odd critique of a thriller, but there was a point where it felt like the author was a magician unveiling trick after trick from her hat with full-on jazz hands.

Otherwise, this is an entertaining thriller and a fun read.

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Jane Corry’s new thriller Blood Sisters will be published this January. Keep an eye on this blog for my review!

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.