The Housewife by Valerie Keogh

☆☆1/2
Kindle Edition, 302 pages
Expected publication: February 27th 2019 by Bookouture
About the Book:
“There’s no place like home” – that’s what I tell myself as I pull another flawless meal from the oven. This perfect house on a quiet street was supposed to be my sanctuary, a place to recover. But everything changed the moment I saw that woman in the charity shop. She triggered something dark, buried deep within my memory. Now I’ve started forgetting small things, like locking the front door. And bigger things, like remembering to pick my little girl up from nursery. I feel terrified every time I pass through a particular spot in our living room. And sometimes, when I’m alone, I’m sure I can hear a baby crying. I think the woman in the shop knows what happened to me. But if I can’t trust myself to believe she’s real, who will?

This one failed to reel me in. Am I getting harder and harder to please, thriller wise? Because yet another book with raving reviews from a reliable author whose writing is always spectacular failed to capture me. There was nothing short with the writing with this one at all, Keogh continues to be at the top of her game. But I couldn’t get invested in the characters and I couldn’t sit long with it. It may have been a little too slow building for me to latch.

Yes, there's a twist and I still can't get my head around it. I found so much of this domestic drama to be hard to believe and implausible on so many levels. I tried to relate to the main character, but found it impossible as I just wanted to shake Diane until she got some sense. Yes, it all comes together in a dramatic conclusion but there were actually still a few loose ends and unanswered questions once the big reveal occurred.

Did I enjoy it? Well, I found it hard to put down as I wanted to see what and why she was forgetting. Let me say that I still don't buy it but I had a couple of hours of entertainment while reading. Just make sure that if you read this you can have a serious amount of skill in suspension of disbelief. But please, do not take my word for it. Keogh is an incredible writer and I would recommend her any day, this one was just not for me. Maybe I'm just jaded from having read so many similar books and I'm sure I'm in the minority finding myself incapable of it. This isn't the first book by this author that I've read, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

Thank you NetGalley, Bookouture and Valerie Keogh for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an impartial review; all opinions are my own.

#TheHousewife #NetGalley