Book Review

I read this book last year, but I have wanted to review it since I read it in December. I WILL post spoilers, so first I'll post what the book is about from Goodreads in case it's something you want to read and don't want spoilers.

When Catherine wakes up alone one morning, she thinks her husband has gone for a run before work. But Simon never makes it to the office. His running shoes are by the front door. Nothing is missing—except him.

Catherine knows Simon must be in trouble. He wouldn’t just leave her. He wouldn’t leave the children.

But Simon knows the truth—about why he left and what he’s done. He knows things about his marriage that it would kill Catherine to find out. The memories she holds onto are lies.

While Catherine faces a dark new reality at home, Simon’s halfway around the world, alive and thriving. He’s doing whatever it takes to stay one step ahead of the truth.

But he can’t hide forever, and when he reappears twenty-five years later, Catherine will finally learn who he is.

And wish she’d stayed in the dark.

This book made me angry through the whole book and then it made me REALLY angry at the end.  Simon decides he is angry at his wife, for a reason you discover at the end, and after thinking about killing himself for awhile and can't go through with it, he runs away leaving behind not only his wife, but 2 kids. Catherine, not believing her husband would just leave her, is convinced his is kidnapped. For years, even when everyone else gave up hope, she did not. She still held on to the hope that he was out there. Meanwhile, her husband is gallivanting around being this person or that person, staying under the radar but living a pretty good life.  He helps restore a hostel and then decides to burn it to the ground (b/c he is a psychopath) steals a dead mans passport and runs away to America, specifically the Florida Keys. There he runs into his wife's best friend. She spots him, tries to talk him into coming home. What does he do? HE KILLS HER!!!! Pushes her into traffic and fucking kills her. He then has to run away, eventually ending up in Mexico. He ends up working security for a whore house, falling in love with a whore after helping her kill a client who tried to kill her (okay fine, this was was validated). The whore, ran away to Mexico after her and her mom ran away from Europe to escape her abusive dad. After learning he is dead, her and Simon go back to Europe and move back into her mansion and take care of the vineyard.  He ends up marrying her, having 2 more kids and they live a pretty great life until she dies of breast cancer after about 20 years together. He then travels back to his first family to try and talk to Catherine and explain to him what happened when he left. 

So Catherine....she struggles for a long time. She almost loses her house, and tries to figure out how to enter the work world again after years home with her kids.  To make ends meet, she starts making clothes for some people in the neighborhood. She was a very talented seamstress for a long time, and then something happened a few years earlier that changed her and she no longer had a desire to sew. But having to start making her own way, she picked it back up. Fast forward a bit, and she ends up meeting a girl, whose mom owns a boutique, at the grocery store she works at.  The boutique owner ask Catherine to sew some items for her to sell. This becomes her new job, and it was a success and it takes Catherine down a very different path in her life.  Catherine ends up being the owner of the shop, and being so successful she opens a few more shops throughout London. She does end up finding love and remarrying. Also, she does have a feeling that Simon is still alive, but she can't prove it. 

Simon ends up telling his new wife about his previous life and she makes him promise her, on her death bed, that he will go make up with Catherine, or at the very least tell her the truth. So about a year or so after his wife's death he goes to find Catherine. Which isn't hard b/c she never left the house they had when they were married. Here is where the book really started to piss me off. Simon starts to tell her of his life for the last 25 years, telling her about killing her best friend, and the women he remarried. Then the truth comes out. Simon was a workaholic, trying to get a business off the ground. Catherine becomes close with his best friend and Simon doesn't think much of it until one night, the night of his birthday party, both Catherine and the friend disappear. Simon wants to go chase them upstairs when he sees their shadows in the bedroom curtains. He gets to the bedroom  door and hears Catherine moaning and decides not to go in the room, and instead runs downstairs as if nothing happened. He doesn't tell Catherine what he almost witnessed that night, and instead festers on it and starts to hate her. She ends up pregnant and b/c they've only had sex a couple times and he wasn't even able to "finish" he doesn't believe the baby is his. The baby is born and he hates him. He tries so hard to love him and can't seem to do it. One night Catherine goes downstairs after drawing a bath for the baby and asks Simon to watch him. Simon takes this as an opportunity to do the unthinkable....he allows the baby to drown in the tub....thinking too late that he fucked up, he tries to preform CPR and calls 9-1-1 but it's too late. The baby dies. Simon was already broken b/c of the affair (which Catherine didn't know he knew about), and now Catherine was as well b/c her baby was dead. 

Once the whole truth is out, Catherine is livid. She starts to yell at Simon about how wrong he was. First off, the friend (name I can't think of right now) and her weren't having an affair, he RAPED her!! As a punishment for stealing Simon from him when they were teenagers.  The friend was gay, and had a crush on Simon, but Catherine won b/c Simon isn't gay. Well Catherine was being punished for that....Second, the baby was 100% Simon's b/c during the RAPE the friend sodomized her, so it was physically impossible for the baby to be his.  So Simon threw away what seemed like a perfectly good marriage, someone who loved him, killed an innocent baby, killed an innocent women, walked out on his kids, all b/c he didn't know how to fucking open his mouth and say something!!!! If he had either opened the door that night, or later said something there would be so many lives spared.  

The only confession in the last part of the story that I agreed with is he also killed the friend a few days after the birthday party. Now, the friend thought he was doing it b/c he raped Catherine, and Simon was just doing it b/c he was a pig who slept with his wife. Either way, he was dead and no one batted an eye b/c they thought he went home to his country. 

This was a random KU pick, and it was definitley one of the better thrillers I read all year.