Before We Met by Lucie Whitehouse

Before We Met is a thriller based on the secrets within a marriage.  It also explores the relationship between siblings.  The narrator, Hannah Reilly is happily married after a whirlwind romance - she met her husband Mark while he was on a business trip in the US and she was living there.  Now they have moved to his luxurious London home.  Mark is a successful businessman running his own software company and is away on business quite a bit.  Hannah is coming to terms with married life and the loss of her financial independence as she struggles to find a job.  The story opens with Hannah waiting at Heathrow for the arrival of Mark who is flying back from New York.  As the passengers file through arrivals we feel Hannah’s anticipation and then gradually the feeling is replaced by worry as Mark fails to arrive.  The worry is intensified as Hannah tries unsuccessfully to contact him.  The worry is later replaced by suspicion as Hannah searches for clues as to why Mark has failed to arrive.  I found it a fast paced read.       

Kind of Cruel by Sophie Hannah

This is the first Sophie Hannah book I have read and it won't be the last.  Amber Hewerdine is suffering from insomnia and goes to see a hypnotherapist not expecting it to help.  She is obsessed by an event that happened several years earlier when her sister-in-law, Jo, rented a large house, Little Orchard, for the whole extended family to stay one Christmas.  While there, Jo, her husband and their two sons went missing for 24 hours on Christmas day.  They returned unharmed, but no mention was made of it again.  While under hypnosis Amber utters the words ‘kind, cruel, kind of cruel’ – these words mean nothing to her, but as the story unfolds she realises she has seen the words before.  She thinks she must have seen them at Little Orchard.  She is arrested two hours later as a result of having said the words.  The words are somehow connected with the murder of woman Amber has never met or heard of.  I liked the intrigue from the start.  The story is mostly narrated by Amber, but there are also chapters narrated by the hypnotherapist.  I was a little disappointed by the end.    

The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

Winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize.  The story is a fictionalised autobiography of Daisy Goodwill Flett.  The novel details Daisy’s long, at times mundane, life.  It is structured in ten chapters starting with her Birth in Canada in 1905 and ending with her death in a nursing home in Florida.   I liked the use of different narrative voices and devices – it is written in a mix of first person, third person and uses letters, lists, tributes to tell the story.  The book contains a family tree and family photographs to complete the biographical feel.  I enjoyed more sections than others.