This was recommended by a friend whose taste I respect.  That said, it started slow and that coupled with my being sick I kept falling asleep.  I couldn’t keep track of what I’d read.  I got to about chapter 8 and had to start back at chapter 6 then I got to chapter 19? But had to start back at chapter 11 because I was drifting for so much of it.  It took 3 days and I still had about 3 hours to go.  But I have to say, finishing the book, it’s a darned good book. 

The Wife and the Widow 
by Christian White 2020
Read by Caz Prescott 7h 10m
Rating: A/ suspense fiction 

Amazon says:  Set against the backdrop of an eerie island town in the dead of winter, The Wife and the Widow is an unsettling thriller told from two perspectives: Kate, a widow whose grief is compounded by what she learns about her dead husband’s secret life; and Abby, an island local whose world is turned upside when she’s forced to confront the evidence of her husband’s guilt. But nothing on this island is quite as it seems, and only when these women come together can they discover the whole story about the men in their lives.

At first I thought this was not a good match for me at all and I could have gathered that from the publisher-provided blurb (above). There is no mention of murder or a mystery. It is a family thriller and yes after awhile there is a murder and then there are more“crimes, but it all takes awhile. Imo, the pervasive feeling in this novel is sadness or maybe it’s fear. And there’s some anger, but there’s less of that. I think the “thriller” aspect mentioned in the blurb comes mostly from the narrator’s reading 

But what I got felt quite different.  Kate’s husband, a palliative care physician, doesn’t show up at the airport and she finds out he’s been gone for two weeks – just calling her from somewhere. Abby’s husband is right there on the island servicing the customers who want decks and saunas etc.  Kate is told her husband may have some form of “spiritual distress” after a special patient died. 

And the tale unfolds from there with two families tangled and almost completely destroyed.  The twists get tighter and the tension grows throughout the book – advice? Read to the last page.