A Good Marriage, Book of the Month’s token Thriller book for May was of course going into my little blue box. I mean a solid thriller is always up my alley. What I didn’t know at the time was that Kimberley McCreight wrote one of my favorite thriller/mystery books I read in college, Reconstructing Amelia. I did not realize this until after I read the book, which was probably for the better because then I went into more open minded with little expectation.
This is a slow burn thriller, with multiple view points, and lots of character baggage. Meaning, that each character we encounter is hiding so many secrets that it was a little hard to keep them all straight at first. However, the baggage really gave all of the characters a lot of depth, and while there are a ton of characters, we only switch between two POVs and court transcripts, which helped the story to flow nicely.
Our two main characters are Amanda and Lizzie. When Amanda winds up murdered in her home in Park Slope, her husband Zach reaches out to his old law school friend Amanda to prove his innocents. As the investigation deepens, Lizzie starts to uncover that life in Park Slope isn’t so pristine and that she’s not alone in her marriage struggles. In fact McCreight does a fabulous job of defining what a ‘good marriage’ is made of. Spoiler, the answer is there is no one recipe for a ‘good marriage’.
I really enjoyed both character’s but Lizzie was my favorite viewpoint. Amanda left me wanting more. She was so lonely and beat down. While this normally would have given me some empathy for her, the unresolved issue of her mental state left me a little confused. I needed a little more resolution around her mental illness to fully accept the delusions she was having.
I was completely thrown for a loop by the actual murderer, and felt an incredible amount of triumph from the Zach’s outcome from this story line. He was such an unlikable character, but McCreight really crafted the perfect villain. If you’re a fan of psychological or legal thrillers you’ll really enjoy this book.
This is a slow burn thriller, with multiple view points, and lots of character baggage. Meaning, that each character we encounter is hiding so many secrets that it was a little hard to keep them all straight at first. However, the baggage really gave all of the characters a lot of depth, and while there are a ton of characters, we only switch between two POVs and court transcripts, which helped the story to flow nicely.
Our two main characters are Amanda and Lizzie. When Amanda winds up murdered in her home in Park Slope, her husband Zach reaches out to his old law school friend Amanda to prove his innocents. As the investigation deepens, Lizzie starts to uncover that life in Park Slope isn’t so pristine and that she’s not alone in her marriage struggles. In fact McCreight does a fabulous job of defining what a ‘good marriage’ is made of. Spoiler, the answer is there is no one recipe for a ‘good marriage’.
I really enjoyed both character’s but Lizzie was my favorite viewpoint. Amanda left me wanting more. She was so lonely and beat down. While this normally would have given me some empathy for her, the unresolved issue of her mental state left me a little confused. I needed a little more resolution around her mental illness to fully accept the delusions she was having.
I was completely thrown for a loop by the actual murderer, and felt an incredible amount of triumph from the Zach’s outcome from this story line. He was such an unlikable character, but McCreight really crafted the perfect villain. If you’re a fan of psychological or legal thrillers you’ll really enjoy this book.