The Marriage Lie-Review
The Marriage Lie by Kimberly Belle
Rating: 4 coffee cups
Synopsis: Seven-year itch? Not for Iris and Will. After seven years of marriage, Iris and Will are still in a state of newlywed bliss. When Will leaves for a work conference to Orlando one morning, their perfect marriage is shattered. Another plane headed to the opposite coast has crashed, killing everyone on board. And according to the airline, Will was on that plane.
In her quest to figure out why Will was on that plane instead of where he was supposed to be, Iris will uncover secrets that will have her asking, "Did I really ever know the man I married?"
Review: When it comes to mystery novels like this, I typically don't read a whole lot of them. I feel like it's the same material rehashed over and over again. But this one held my interest the entire way through. Normally in mysteries like this, there is a point in the story that seems to drag. For me, this one held up to the hype and kept me furiously turning the pages. Throughout the whole novel, I was trying to come up with theories on what the big reveal was going to be.
In this novel, Iris' grief is two-fold; grief at the thought she has lost her husband in a plane crash, and grief on discovering secrets about the man she married. But through that grief, Iris is determined to uncover those secrets that keep her from putting to rest the man she thought she knew. Dave, Iris' brother, accompanies Iris in tracking down clues to Will's past. These scenes were some of the novel's strongest. I really enjoyed seeing their sibling relationship, and I was kind of disappointed when Dave kind of fell off the face of the earth for the last 1/4 of the novel.
Another enjoyable piece of this story was showcasing the grief of the families of those passengers on the Liberty flight, especially Iris and Evan. There were a couple of quotes that stood out to me:
"I don't want their sympathy. I don't want their kind words. I only want my husband back." ~Iris
"That the platitudes everybody keeps feeding me, things like 'everything happens for a reason' and 'Will would want you to be happy' make me want to punch something?" ~Iris
The phrase, "everything happens for a reason" seems to be the default response in times of tragedy. And there is nothing that makes me more furious than hearing that line. I'm glad this novel highlighted that particular platitude that gets used, even when it shouldn't.
Like I mentioned earlier, this novel kept me guessing the entire way through...what actually happened and who was involved. Without giving away too much, the reason for Will's lies that was revealed at the end kind of left me disappointed. I was expecting something a lot more significant. I found myself saying, "That's it???" Other than that hiccup, the very end scene made it a little more satisfying.
