Book Review | It’s Always the Husband by Michele Campbell

It’s Always the Husband by Michele Campbell

★★★☆☆

336 pages

Published: May 16th, 2017 by St. Martin’s Press

Plot

Kate, Aubrey, and Jenny. They first met as college roommates and soon became inseparable, even though they are as different as three women can be. Twenty years later, one of them is standing at the edge of a bridge… and someone else is urging her to jump.

How did things come to this?

As the novel cuts back and forth between their college years and their adult years, you see the exact reasons why these women love and hate each other—but can feelings that strong lead to murder? Or will everyone assume, as is often the case, that it’s always the husband? (Goodreads)

Main Characters

• Kate – rich, trustee’s daughter
• Aubrey – comes from a very poor family, she had to work extremely hard to get into the school and pay to go, successful yoga school owner
• Jenny – determined to be top dog, becomes mayor of Belle River when she’s older; she was the one who kept the Whipple Triplets out of too much trouble in college
• Tim – Jenny’s husband; works with her at the construction company that is rumored to play dirty; Lucas’s cousin
• Ethan – Aubrey’s husband; doctor in town
• Keniston Eastman – Kate’s dad; trustee of the college
• Lucas – Jenny’s high school ‘boyfriend’; Kate ends up like him and starting a relationship with him
• Griff – Kate’s semi boyfriend that she mainly uses for money and fun when she is high or drunk; they end up married
• Chief Rizzo – Officer in Belle River, came from New York – Had a crush on Kate (even though she gave him the wrong name)
• Theresa – young officer that Rizzo hired

My Review

Eludes to an incident their freshman year that tore them apart and left an innocent person dead.. this is built upon throughout the book. It then flips back to freshman year and the relationship between the roommates and the complicated relationships around all of them. I was expecting this book to be a little more exciting, but I definitely got bored a little in the middle and had to switch to a different book to give it a break. The characters relationships were so convoluted, privileged, and almost unbelievable that they stayed friends.

Likes

• The convoluted characters, it wasn’t completely clear who did what for a lot of the book (this is Las somewhat of a negative.)
• The ending – kept you guessing up until the last page

Dislikes

• The story was a little slow, lots of background at the beginning and not a lot of action until the end
• The characters were so unlikeable and unrelatable (which helps with the story)

Spoilers