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O poveste de dragoste, învăluită în mister și secrete. Povestea Emmei și a lui Leo vă va cuceri dacă vă plac cărțile de mister & romance & cu acel ceva neașteptat. Emma and Leo narrate the various chapters that start off strongly intriguing but as things become clearer, some things seemed to implausible to me. Most were explained away and the twists were interesting but given the fame of Janice and her very famous husband, Jeremy, who has reached out to Emma to Leo's surprise and confusion; I just couldn't shake how the media didn't unravel the mystery which wasn't well hidden nor that "surprising". Furthermore, the media parks outside Janice's and Jeremy's home but then seemingly stop and do not further mentions in the 24/7 news cycle. Huh? In fact, when Janice goes into hiding, no one seems to notice her presence at the place.
In a Nutshell: Great in bits and pieces but doesn’t come together into a cohesive whole. This might have ended up a strong favourite of mine if I could have connected with the writing style better. But the disconnect with the plot and the decisions of one MC resulted in a strictly average experience. Readers in the U.S. have really been loving The Love of My Life. I get it. Rosie Walsh’s latest novel is full of twists and turns, and I never was fully certain where the story would go.Because Leo's wife has had a brush with death (from cancer… the publisher blurb just mentions an “illness”), he looks into her past. He's an obituary writer and just can’t help himself from starting hers just in case. What he learns is that she’s not who he thought she was, and she’s got a whopper of a secret (or two! or three!) in her closet. This is one of those books where I thought I could see from the beginning where things were headed (and not the obvious direction Walsh tries to steer the reader toward), so I thought I was really smart ... until I realized that I was completely wrong! Walsh does a masterful job at throwing a wrench into everything at just the right time. I loved both Emma and Leo's characters, which is quite a feat for Walsh to accomplish as there are circumstances that make Emma a very complex character, but yet I was rooting for her every step of the way. I appreciated the fact that Walsh made it a point to show that not all spouses who are hiding things are murderous psychopaths - sometimes the secrets are brought about by despair, loss, and even love. But what I found the most interesting was that uncovering those secrets was just as intriguing as finding out whether someone was a murdering psychopath.
What do you do when you find out everything your wife ever told you about herself is a lie? Allow Rosie Walsh's love story slash mystery, The Love of My Life, to explain.” Emma has secrets she has never shared with her husband, the man she deeply loves. She never imagined her past life would surface in such an ugly, hurtful way. It is the last thing she would have wanted to happen, for Leo's sake. For her sake, too. which i dont think is inherently a bad thing if the transition between genres is seamless, but the flow and pacing in this definitely feels disconnected at times. i enjoyed reading the mystery section the most. i think the misdirections are done well and it creates a really good plot for a domestic thriller. i would have loved for this vibe to remain throughout the entire story. but the other sections are decent - i love how quintessentially british the talk about relationships and jobs is. In highly readable narrative, Rosie Walsh delivers well-developed, lovable characters, lots of dynamics, and interesting plot points (I now want to travel the world looking for rare crabs). 🦀 I have mixed feelings about The Love of my Life. While I loved the premise, love a dual narrative, and love having an author throw around pieces of information that get put together in the second half of a book, I just couldn’t connect to this story as much as I wanted to.How do we really build a new life? About the mystery of identity and the sometimes cost of love, Walsh’s latest is a stunner.” Walsh’s hugely compelling The Love of My Life instantly pulls you deep into the interior of a marriage. Part thriller, part mystery, part heart-wrenching love story, this is a treasure for book clubs everywhere.”
My thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Love of My Life”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn't work out better. The problems I had while reading were that I really didn't think that Emma's secrets were THAT bad. When Leo finally finds everything out he is as puzzled as the reader. I mean, from a woman's POV I get why she would be hesitant to tell him about her past post-partum issues, but after 20 years married she had so much she was hiding that made little sense. I also did not get Jill and her bizarre behavior. I actually thought the book was going to veer in a totally different direction for a minute there, and I got kind of excited, but that just went nowhere. I have held you at night for ten years and I didn’t even know your name.We have a child together. A dog, a house. A few years later after therapy and getting her life together she changes her name to Emma to try and put a lid on her past.this was a such an odd reading experience because the story is pretty much a hybrid. the book begins as if its just a contemporary fiction story, but then starts to transform into a mystery/thriller, only to finish as a womens fiction novel. its as if the author didnt know what kind of story she wanted to write, so she just combined them all into one. Combining the gripping pace of a psychological thriller with the tenderness and sorrow of a love story gone wrong, this one’s a winner.”
This family just captured my heart and had me 110% invested in their future as a unit. Walsh did a fabulous job in creating a world filled with laughter - as well as horrendous mental suffering! - that I could disappear into for the duration of this story. And to think, the author was pregnant and/or had a newborn to take care of while she was writing this book. Respect and Applause, Applause, Applause! The multiple points of view Walsh employed served the story perfectly; I raced through this book to learn the truth alongside Leo. And she might just have got away with it, if it weren’t for her husband’s job. Leo is an obituary writer; Emma a well-known marine biologist. When she suffers a serious illness, Leo copes by doing what he knows best – researching and writing about his wife’s life. But as he starts to unravel the truth, he discovers the woman he loves doesn’t really exist. Even her name isn’t real.Brilliantly plotted and beautifully written, what really elevates Rosie Walsh’s book above the competition is the characters. Contradictory, flawed and entirely human, I loved and rooted for them like real people.”
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