The Perfect Marriage

The Perfect Marriage is anything but perfect. The story starts with infidelity and murder, and I was drawn in by the wife's pain of discovering her husband's infidelity and his arrest for his mistress's death. Sarah, a defense attorney, must defend her unfaithful husband against murder charges. Sarah and Adam Morgan both find that they didn't exactly know what was going on with their "perfect" partner. Tangled clues and revelations create a web of assumptions for readers. I love a huge, unforeseen twist and this one has a great one.

As the rest of this list hints, mystery stories involving unhappily married couples aren’t my usual go-to when picking something to read, nor is it something I particularly enjoy writing about. Maybe that’s a good thing, given the standard advice of “Write what you know,” but generally, the formula (and trust me, it is a formula) bores me. 

But at the time I came across this book, I was dabbling with the idea of writing an alternating-first-person-POV book in the way this novel does (as an aside, check out Lucy Foley’s books for other great examples of that device if… show more.

This book had me completely fooled. I didn’t see the ending coming but found it completely believable and just so delicious.

Unraveling the clues, deciding what is truth and what is lies was just so much fun. The ending surprised and delighted me. This is just a wonderful read, all around, or in my case an audiobook that had me listening at every opportunity.