The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty (audio)

★★★★★

"None of us ever know all the possible courses our lives could have and maybe should have taken.  It's probably just as well.  Some secrets are meant to stay secrets forever.  Just ask Pandora."

This is the first novel that I have read by Liane Moriarty and I was pleasantly surprised.  I picked this up at the library as an audio book and had no real high hopes for it.  I had seen it on the best seller's list and some other lists in the past and didn't really have anything else that I wanted to listen to at the time. I was planning on it being some sort of 'chick-lit' average book that would - at the very least - pass the time on my way to and from work for a week or so.  Wow, was a wrong.

This novel is told from the point-of-view of three very different women whose lives begin to slowly come together.  At the center of it all is the secret of one women's husband and the ultimate question of how well you can ever really know someone - specifically your spouse.  Like the book, I wasn't expecting to like the characters as much as I did.  They were all significantly flawed and made a lot of bad choices, but each one began to grow on me.

I usually am not super into reading this type of book, but I was hooked from the very first page.  Even though the 'husband's secret' is the center of the book, figuring out the secret is not.  The secret is actually revealed fairly early on in the book.  I wasn't super surprised by it.  Which was fine because the real focus of the novel was not the secret itself, but how it unfolds and the people that it effects along the way.  The writing was wonderful and witty and the plot left me wanting to turn the pages faster than I could read them.  The dialogue and dynamics of the novel is pure brilliant.  And I absolutely loved the interaction not only between the characters but the inner dialog that was the driving point of the story.

Was this book perfect?  Not at all.  The characters were more-often-than-not superficial and there were way too many coinsidances to make this story at all believable.  But, all that aside, I thought the novel was extremely well done and I couldn't put it down.  So that gives it a 5 stars in my book.  Plus there was the epilogue.  Wow - just wow.  Very creative and thought-provoking and not at all what I was expecting.

Liane Moriarty is now one of the best new(ish) authors that I have read in awhile and I can't wait to see what else she has in store!

This book was #3 on my top ten list of 2015.