Release date: August 30, 2022
Publisher: MIRA
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Synopsis:
Only one thing stands in the way of Laurel Applebaum’s happiness…Doug Applebaum.
In this darkly comic novel about a wife whose rope is so frayed it’s about to snap, Laurel gets a call that her husband has been in an accident. She imagines the worst. But as she is on the way to the ER, another emotion seizes her. Relief. Doug’s death could solve all her problems. No more catering to his incessant demands. Then there’s the insurance money. Laurel’s dreams seem so close. There’s just one problem: Doug is very much alive. Now Laurel has to decide if she is going to do something about it.
Subversive, irreverent and surprisingly poignant, Take My Husband probes the deep corners of a marriage and emerges to find the light. For anyone who’s spent a little too much time with a significant other and thought, One of us has got to go.
Review:
This was such an odd read for me and I usually do ok with odd but I struggled with this one. Not only was it strange, it was also dark and that’s a weird thing for me to not enjoy. I like my thrillers dark and am normally not bothered by much but this was such a weird book that it bothered me. I expected it to be mostly full of dark humor, and it was but Laurel was seriously messed up. Not only is she relieved when she assumes her husband is dead she doesn’t really stop longing for him to die. Like really fantasizing about it to the point that it becomes her entire personality. Excuse me, what? Get a divorce already. Look, I could see where she was coming from because Doug is no prize but she had some serious issues herself. I kept waiting for something exciting to happen and unfortunately it never did, the whole thing felt like one big meandering story that never went anywhere in the end. And the end itself was bizarre which is truly saying something for this book. I guess if you like really messed up dark humor and could take this as satire this may work but it was a miss for me.
Overall rating: 2.5/5
Thanks to the publisher for my review copy.
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