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Review – The New Husband – D.J. Palmer

the new husbandThe New Husband
Author: D.J. Palmer
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Review Copy Provided by Publisher

Description:
What makes Simon Fitch so perfect?
-He knows all her favorite foods, music, and movies.
-Her son adores him. He was there when she needed him most.
-He anticipates her every need.
-He would never betray her like her first husband.

The perfect husband. He checks all the boxes.

The question is, why?

Nina Garrity learned the hard way that her missing husband, Glen, had been leading a double life with another woman. But with Glen gone―presumably drowned while fishing on his boat―she couldn’t confront him about the affair or find closure to the life he blew apart.

Now, a year and a half later, Nina has found love again and hopes she can put her shattered world back together. Simon, a widower still grieving the death of his first wife, thinks he has found his dream girl in Nina, and his charm and affections help break through to a heart hardened by betrayal. Nina’s teenage son, Connor, embraces Simon as the father he wishes his dad could have been, while her friends see a different side to him, and they aren’t afraid to use the word obsession.

Nina works hard to bridge the divide that’s come between her daughter and Simon. She wants so badly to believe her life is finally getting back on track, but she’ll soon discover that the greatest danger to herself and her children are the lies people tell themselves.

Review:
After my enjoyment of Saving Meghan (see review HERE), I was honestly worried when i was offered the chance to review The New Husband on whether it could keep it on the edge of my seat like Saving Meghan did. But to start of, I would caveat that this book should have some kind of trigger warning for abuse – just as a heads up. there were a few places that I felt uncomfortable and I’ve never been in that kind of situation.

While I found this one to be must more in your face with the whole done it (I mean, i had a pretty solid idea of who the bad guy was fairly early on) but seeing all the psychological twists…at one stage I tweeted that the book was a total mindfuck – and it was. Its honestly hard to write a good review without divulging spoilers and I hate doing that.

I will admit that through most of the book Nina kind of annoyed me – I know that Simon was a psycho and all that but it seems like she had no personality even with her first husband and now was just trying to find herself. Her daughter was by far the more interesting of the 3 characters you get to know in the Garrity family – and I really liked her friend (and of course, the dog made the story all the more enjoyable like dogs do). My only other comment will be that there was a bit of a dangling thread to simon’s story that i would have loved to have seen tied up – but that makes me wonder if there is another story coming…

 
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Posted by on June 1, 2020 in Book Review, Review

 

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Review – Saving Meghan – D.J. Palmer

Saving Meghan
Author: D.J. Palmer
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Review Copy Provided By Publisher

Description:
Can you love someone to death?

Some would say Becky Gerard is a devoted mother and would do anything for her only child. Others claim she’s obsessed and can’t stop the vicious circle of finding a cure at her daughter’s expense.

Fifteen-year-old Meghan has been in and out of hospitals with a plague of unexplained illnesses. But when the ailments take a sharp turn, doctors intervene and immediately suspect Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a rare behavioral disorder where the primary caretaker, typically the mother, seeks medical help for made-up symptoms of a child. Is this what’s going on? Or is there something even more sinister at hand?

Review
Saving Meghan came at the perfect time for me, I was getting ready to head out of town for a short trip and I was in an epic reading funk. I started reading it one day at lunch (while I was waiting a brutally long time for my computer profile to load) and before I knew it, I was sneaking chapters in between breaks in class and I totally blew off a workout that night to keep reading. So yeah, I kind of devoured it. Also I loved the interactive part of reading this – when the publisher asked you to tweet were you – #believebecky or #protectmeghan – because it made you think about which side of the debate you came down on – did I believe that Becky (Meghan’s mother) was hurting her or was Meghan really sick…

I’m not going to spoil Saving Meghan for you – and honestly, its kind of hard to touch on many of the different plot points without potentially risking spoilers – but suffice to say that I totally didn’t predict anything about how the story unwound, whatsoever…I was guessing right up until the very last page what was going to happen. I did think that Palmer did a solid job of developing all of the characters – even those that I thought were going to be relatively minor to the storyline – were two dimensional and believable. There were so many different layers to the characters in Saving Meghan – there was family dysfunction (oh boy was Becky’s family dysfunctional); there were the medical mystery of what was going on with Meghan, there was a family dealing with grief and the role that the internet plays in solving medical mysteries (or does it cause more confusion).

D.J. Palmer is a new to me author, but after taking a look at his website (which is under his pseudonym Daniel Palmer) – i’m definitely going to be reading more of them by him in the future. I love a good medical thriller/suspense/mystery and good ones are often few and far between (so if you have any recommendations, please let me know!)

 
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Posted by on April 9, 2019 in Book Review, Review

 

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