The Forgotten Wife by Emma Robinson

☆☆☆1/2
Kindle Edition, 277 pages
Expected publication: January 27th 2020 by Bookouture
About the Book:
It was a wooden box, white with yellow and green flowers. Shelley ran a finger over the embossed lettering – Memories – pressed her lips tightly together, feeling her heart pounding in her chest… and opened it. When Shelley first met Greg, her life had been full of possibility. A whirlwind romance, a dream wedding, moving into their first house together, thinking about starting a family. But now it’s ten years since their wedding. Greg has gone. And there’s a room in the house where Shelley has shut a baby blanket away. In a box, under a bed, in a spare room, behind a door that she never opens. If it’s there, she can forget about it. Just like everything else in that room. Just like her other memories. Of a marriage that perhaps hadn’t been perfect. Of a life that hadn’t gone the way she had expected. She’s been managing to hide from her past. Every day she acts like everything is normal. Going to work and following a routine helps her pretend the bad stuff never happened. Until one day, everything changes. She sees the couple moving in next door, giggling as they walk up the path to their new home. The woman is pregnant. It’s like she has everything that Shelley has lost. But when Shelley properly meets Lara, she soon discovers she is in fact carrying a heartache to match Shelley’s own. As her friendship with Lara deepens, Shelley starts to wonder what might happen if she opens the box she’s hidden away. Will the secrets from her past – about what she lost, what she’s hiding from, and what she has been doing her best to forget – destroy her?

Shelley assumed she was the broken one, who Lara was trying to fix,
but maybe Lara needed her just as much?
Although I thought the beginning was a little slow moving, this book is an easy read where you get lost in the lives of two women. This story is about Shelley and Lara who take the steps to "find the joy" and become fast friends while doing so.

Throw together an overprotective husband, death, miscarriages and past hurts and Emma Robinson hands you a book that will keep you turning pages with a story that will stay with you. Ms. Robinson has written a beautiful story with wonderful, real, and likable characters whose lives are filled with reflection, growth, determination, humor, love, and acceptance. I enjoyed witnessing Shelley's and Lara's transformation into their new normal.

P.S. It was kind of weird reading about a character with the same name as me and even spelled the same way.

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

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