The Loving Husband
A Novel
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3.2 • 22 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
“Be careful, Fran,” the man said quietly. “About what you think you know.”
In a dilapidated farmhouse out in the vast waterlogged plains of the English Fenlands, Fran awakes groggily to her baby’s cries one February night and finds the bed empty beside her. Her husband, Nathan, is gone.
Moving uneasily through the drafty rooms, searching for her husband, Fran soon makes a devastating discovery that upends her marriage and any semblance of safety. As she tries desperately to make sense of what happened to Nathan, Fran is forced to delve dangerously into the undercurrents of his claustrophobic hometown and question how well she knew him in the first place. Fran, increasingly isolated, grows paranoid—but Nathan isn’t the only one hiding something. Though she can’t tell a soul, Fran is shielding a damning secret of her own: a hazy, dreamlike memory from the night of Nathan’s disappearance that might be the key to it all.
From the bestselling author of The Crooked House comes an utterly gripping psychological thriller spanning the traditions of Daphne du Maurier and S. J. Watson. Christobel Kent’s The Loving Husband is spooky and skillfully written, dragging readers deep into the unsettling world of the Fens and into a marriage of half-truths and past lives, where no one can be trusted—especially not your spouse.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of this engrossing psychological thriller set in rural England from Kent (The Crooked House), Fran Hall awakes early one winter morning to discover that her husband, Nathan, is missing from their bed. A search of their dilapidated farmhouse reveals nothing but the Halls' two young children. The door is unlocked and the mat is muddy, so Fran heads outside, where she finds Nathan's bloody corpse in a drainage ditch. As the murder investigation progresses, the police become increasingly suspicious of Fran. She starts to do some digging of her own, and it's not long before Fran realizes that she was married to a stranger. Skillfully integrated flashbacks permit both Fran and the reader to conduct a marital postmortem, and the harsh weather and isolated locale help amplify the tale's inherent tension. The plot features some clever twists, and though Kent doesn't fully earn her ending, she's crafted an emotionally charged mystery that will keep readers guessing until the final chapter.
