The Husband's Secret

By: Liane Moriarty

Narrated by: Caroline Lee

Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

"My darling Cecilia, if you’re reading this, then I’ve died...."

Imagine that your husband wrote you a letter, to be opened after his death. Imagine, too, that the letter contains his deepest, darkest secret - something with the potential to destroy not just the life you built together, but the lives of others as well. Imagine, then, that you stumble across that letter while your husband is still very much alive....

Cecilia Fitzpatrick has achieved it all - she's an incredibly successful businesswoman, a pillar of her small community, and a devoted wife and mother. Her life is as orderly and spotless as her home. But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia - or each other - but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret.

Acclaimed author Liane Moriarty has written a gripping, thought-provoking novel about how well it is really possible to know our spouses - and, ultimately, ourselves.

©2013 Liane Moriarty (P)2013 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Spellbinding.... A knockout!” (Emily Giffin, New York Times best-selling author)

“The Husband’s Secret is so good, you won’t be able to keep it to yourself.” (USA Today)

“Lip-smacking and sharply intelligent.” (Entertainment Weekly)

3.5 stars: A Very Good Story, but Tess, the End...

Would you consider the audio edition of The Husband's Secret to be better than the print version?

I haven't read the print edition of this book, nor do I ever plan to read it. This audio edition was perfectly acceptable to me.

If you’ve listened to books by Liane Moriarty before, how does this one compare?

This was my first Liane Moriarty book. I might someday try another. (If I do, I'll hope for a more satisfying ending.)

Have you listened to any of Caroline Lee’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I don't think I've heard any other books read by Caroline Lee, but I'd be willing to try another. I thought she did a very good job with this book.

Any additional comments?

3.5 stars - good

This was a pretty good story, but I had some problems with it. So it gets a 3.5-star "good" rating from me.

I have two major complaints, which I'll talk about at length in just a bit. . .

But first, I actually laughed out loud a couple of times in the beginning. Because I listened to this audiobook version of this story, I did not feel able to note down where or why I laughed, but it was sometime during the first 20% of the book - and I'm pretty sure I laughed at things Cecilia either thought or said (or at least, in the "Cecilia Family Scenes"). :-)

One of my - or maybe two of my three? - complaints is related to this line in the book's description:
"But that letter is about to change everything, and not just for her: Rachel and Tess barely know Cecilia—or each other—but they too are about to feel the earth-shattering repercussions of her husband’s secret."

The letter WAS important to the story, but it took an awfully long time before Cecilia read it and we learned what it said. It was introduced fairly early, but it wasn't opened until almost the second half of the book (on page 162 in the hardcover; felt like halfway through in the audio). And then when we did finally learn what "the husband's secret" was. . . The book could have ended right there, 'cause nothing happened regarding it! :-(

(I mean, yes, Cecilia and John-Paul's youngest daughter was an indirect victim of the secret revealed in the letter, but that was it. No punishments or anything were forthcoming for anything.)

This is actually the second - and most important - of the two major complaints I mentioned at the start of this review: The ending didn't resolve anything! The Epilogue actually told us what would have happened had Rachel's daughter remembered about an appointment that day and gave us a pretty big hint as to what was in Cecilia's daughter's future had she not been hospitalized.

But was the husband ever punished for the secret in his letter? No. Not in this story's time line, at least. Once Rachel learned the truth, her reaction to that truth also left a lot to be desired. And while I could believe that it could have happened that way, it did not make for a very satisfying or satisfactory conclusion. :-(

My first major complaint - stemming from the above-mentioned blurb in the description - involves Tess's role in this story. Specifically, what was her role in this story? ???

I initially thought that the husband's secret involved bigamy, but this theory was tossed out as soon as we met Tess and her husband, who was clearly not John-Paul. . . .

Tess hadn't known Rachel's daughter, and she didn't really know Cecilia (if they didn't have their first meeting in this story, they were only passing acquaintances before it), so why was she in this book? She was the ex-girlfriend of that one guy, but he was also a teacher at Cecilia's youngest daughter's school, so Tess was not needed to introduce him as a character.

So why were Tess and her husband and her cousin - and all of their drama and angst - in this book?

???

Can anyone tell me? Because it seems to me that she was filler. :-( Cut Tess out, and the book would have been much shorter. So was she in there just so that this story would be book-length? And so that she could help Cecilia when she collapsed after learning the letter's secret and coming face-to-face with one of the victims of that secret? Because neither of these reasons is enough to justify her inclusion in this story.

Having Tess in the story made it sort of more interesting, but it also made this book read like a soap opera. :-(

So this was a really good story, with a super interesting premise, but it all just sort of fizzled away in the end. I doubt I'll remember this story or these characters in a week, and if I do remember them, it will only be because of how dissatisfied they made me feel. :-(

I feel like I should give this story fewer stars, but it was a good story. It kept me engaged and reading/listening, and I did care enough about the characters to want to see where the story went. . . I'd have given it four stars for being a story that I really enjoyed, but that ending (or non-ending). . .

So 3.5-good-stars is the right rating from me.

A few words on the narration: Caroline Lee did a good job, and if I wouldn't have been able to identify who was speaking apart from Esther (she had a lisp) and Jacob (he was a toddler, and sounded like a toddler), at least the text gave me their identities. So I never felt lost as to who was talking.

One note that it now occurs to me to share: I mentioned it in my first status update on Goodreads while "reading" this book, but forgot about it when writing my review until I started talking about the narration. . . I don't know if it was how the narrator read it or just how it was written (though I suspect it was how it was written), but the love scene between Cecilia and John-Paul made for very awkward listening. I'm pretty sure I actually rolled my eyes (though it might only have been mentally) during that scene. :-(

But overall, I think Caroline Lee did a fine job. I suspect that it is thanks to her narration that I didn't mind all of the Tess parts when I was engaged in listening to this book, even after I began to suspect that the Tess parts were mostly irrelevant.

So I'd give the narration a solid four stars for being "very good; really enjoyable." :-)

Oooh - it's a good one

This book didn't start out quite like I expected, but it's a great listen. The author weaves the story of 3 women seamlessly, and unlike other novels, each kept me interested. I really liked the "what ifs" at the end of the book. Some parts are funny, and others sad, but a good use of a credit. And Audible, I will request this again - could you send me notifications when this author writes another book (reminding me of this one since I read a lot) - I would read more from this author.

What a great book!

Where does The Husband's Secret rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

I prefer nonfiction books, but this was a very nice escape!

What did you like best about this story?

The plot is woven perfectly and I adored all of the characters immediately.

Fantastic in Every Way

A very interesting and satisfying story of interwoven moral dilemmas. I thought that the narrator, Caroline Lee, did a perfect job. I admired so many of the small vocal moments in the way she chose to utter the lines.

Excellent book and way of looking at life

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I will recommend this book to my friends as I really enjoyed the story.

What did you like best about this story?

The way Liane Moriarty took her characters through interesting twists and turns. Then she brings it all together and makes you look at life through different eyes.

Which character – as performed by Caroline Lee – was your favorite?

I enjoyed the husband who wrote the secret letter. You felt for him and what he went through and how you ended up feeling about him in the end.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

This book did make me laugh and cry. The characters feel like real people you know and you feel like you are there with them.

Any additional comments?

I like this book so much I have listened to it three times already and plan on listening to it again and again.

Why?

What would have made The Husband's Secret better?

I listened for hours hoping to get something unexpected out of the story. Sad, troubled characters but no complexity or anything that really makes us care about them. I could not finish the book, towards the end the book became too ridiculous to even bear.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

Not sure, content was hard to overlook.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Frustration

Sorry to leave the characters behind

I had never read anything by this author and have to say I really enjoyed her writing. She talks about the pain and suffering of daily life -- and how the smallest twists and turns can derail someone's path -- but with a lot of wit. I found myself laughing out loud many times, but also identifying with many of the characters' anguish.

The story has a few implausible coincidences and I guessed the "husband's secret" almost immediately, but neither thing affected my enjoyment. Like I said in the headline to this review, I was sorry to leave the characters behind when the book was over. I immediately downloaded another book by Moriarty ("The Hypnotist's Love Story") to see if it would be inhabited by similar people. So far, it's not as good as The Husband's Secret, but still a fun read.

The Real Secret..

Liane Moriarty has easily become one of my favourite authors since I read the amazing 'What Alice Forgot.' She seems to weave very complicated and deep characters into stories that make us thing, gasp, empathize, love, and hate.

The Husband's Secret is no different.

Years ago in small town Australia a young teenage girl was murdered by strangulation, and her murderer was never caught. Present day shows her mother Rachel, a secretary at the public school, who is in a depression because her only son is moving her grandchild to New York. She has more time to ponder the death of her daughter, seething with rage at the man in the town of whom she is certain committed the crime.

Tess has just found out her husband and sister-like cousin have fallen in love, so she goes off with her son to get away from her nightmare of a marriage.

Finally, Celia, the consummate volunteer mother who knows the whole town and is the first one to bring a casserole in times of need to any family is about to find out a secret that her husband has kept for years. And, it's quite the shocking secret.

The characters weave together and apart, and we're left with a fascinating story of survival and reality- one that touches our heart.

Caroline Lee is brilliant as per usual with her excellent narration.

Excellent book- 5 stars in all three categories.

Am I the only one who didn't love this book?

What would have made The Husband's Secret better?

In my humble opinion, the book had several fundamental flaws. I can't tell you what would have made it better, because the whole premise, to me, was ridiculous. First, I (personally) WOULDN'T HAVE OPENED THE LETTER! So, on that basis alone, I found the whole thing implausible. Second, there were too many coincidences that I couldn't accept, and third, I found NONE of the characters believable or likable. Sorry...

Has The Husband's Secret turned you off from other books in this genre?

I'm not sure what the genre is...

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

Well, it gave me a good question to pose to my friends: "If you found a letter written by your husband, addressed to you, but specifically to be read only after his death, what would you do with it?" It turns out that I'm an aberration when it comes to respecting a spouse's privacy (I would have given it to him unopened so he could put it away in a better place), and/or I just really like to delay gratification (because I would assume such a letter could only contain a good surprise worth waiting for!)

'Some secrets are meant to stay secret forever'

I find Moriarty to be witty and funny; I loved "Big Little Lies" which is what motivated me to listen to this one. Bonus, I love Caroline Lee's narration! I love that voice.

I enjoy the way Moriarty tells a story; lives intertwined in unexpected ways with brilliant inner-dialog and witty banter. I didn't find the "secret" to be as exciting as they led us to believe, however I was surprised by it. The story was middle of the road; neither great nor bad, but I would have read it again because I like the author and her style.