When Emma married Benjamin, her life came as close to perfect as someone like her ever could have dreamed. No longer just working for his father, she was part of the family. Helping Benjamin move on from the tragic loss of his first wife hasn’t always been easy – tears, anniversaries, photos of her everywhere – but it brought them closer together, even if his daughter still spends all her time shut up in her room.
But then the first letter arrives at Emma’s desk at work. A pristine white envelope with flawless calligraphy inside.
To Benjamin’s new wife,
With love from,
The wife he killed…
For something labeled as a "jaw-dropping psychological thriller," the only time my jaw dropped was when I yawned. I'm pretty sure my eyes rolled more than anything else because this book? It was utterly ridiculous in so many ways.
To begin with, there wasn't a shred of decency to be found in any of the characters, save for perhaps Emma's sister... unless you count the complete 180-degree personality shift Lily undergoes for reasons that are never actually explained. And Emma herself? Her reactions make absolutely no sense whatsoever. In the blink of an eye, one letter supposedly written by her new husband's dead wife is enough to completely shatter her trust in him and send her spiraling to the point that she almost throws away the career she's worked so hard to build. From there, she proceeds to make some of the stupidest decisions imaginable. Even after the police become involved and essentially imply she may have had something to do with the first wife's death, she still refuses to tell them the truth. Meanwhile, the actual culprit is so painfully obvious that I swear Helen Keller could have figured it out long before Emma did.
Sadly, the plot itself is just as much of a mess as the characters. It's packed with repetitive scenes and plot points that simply don't hold up under even the slightest scrutiny. For example, after reading a letter from the supposedly dead wife explaining exactly where cameras were hidden throughout the house so Benjamin could secretly watch her, Emma never once thinks to even glance in those locations to see if the claim might actually be true. She becomes convinced her stepdaughter is behind the letters, even discovers what could potentially be incriminating evidence in the girl's room, yet never actually bothers to verify what she's found. At the same time, she's conducting her own investigation into the first wife's death, and even after uncovering what appears to be significant evidence, she still doesn't involve the police.
In the end, even if the characters and plot hadn't been such complete disasters, the sheer number of continuity errors would have been enough for this to earn one star from me. In fact, books like this make me want to start my own editing company that specializes in finding these kinds of mistakes before publication, simply to spare myself the headache of encountering them later when it's time to review the finished product. Because honestly... how does a traditionally published novel make it to print with this many glaring inconsistencies (keep in mind that these are only a handful of the ones I found).
- After Emma misses an important meeting, she's told that Robert (the head of the company and her father-in-law) "handled the presentation." Yet the very next time the meeting is mentioned, Robert is telling Emma it's been rescheduled and warning her not to let him down because it's an important client. Which is it? Did you already present the pitch or not? To make matters worse, this same client and presentation are repeatedly used throughout the novel to demonstrate how much these mysterious letters are supposedly affecting Emma's work performance.
- A little later, Robert tears Emma apart because revisions are late and reviews have been submitted incorrectly. The problem? The story begins the day Emma returns from her honeymoon. So exactly when did all these missed deadlines occur? This contradiction becomes even more confusing because only a few pages earlier Emma is reflecting on how she's never had issues at work before and has always been considered the perfect employee.
- Then there's the moment Emma goes out of her way to bake Lily her favorite double-chocolate brownies, only to later discover them "dumped in the trash, crumbled into yellow dust." I'm sorry... if my double-chocolate brownies somehow transformed into yellow dust, I'd probably throw them away too.
- Another glaring inconsistency involves the mysterious letters themselves. When Emma receives the first letter supposedly from Alice, she shows absolutely no sign of recognizing the handwriting. Yet when the second letter arrives, she instantly knows whose handwriting it is. Not because she already received the first letter, but because she's apparently seen it throughout the house on recipe cards she uses in the kitchen, discarded birthday cards, and other handwritten notes. If she recognized it that easily, why didn't she recognize it the first time?
- When something happens at school and Emma is called to pick Lily up, we're explicitly told the principal is a man. Yet by the time Emma arrives at the school, the principal has somehow become a woman.
- During Emma's first meeting with her sister in years, the author makes a point of mentioning that Emma's coffee has gone cold and developed a film on top. When her sister arrives, said sister is offered coffee but declines, saying she won't be staying long. Literally a few sentences later, however, the sister has apparently ordered a full breakfast of eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy (among other things), and has had her coffee mug refilled three times. Emma has also somehow ordered avocado toast and now has a glass of water as well. Then they simply leave without finishing their meals or paying the bill. Or maybe they did pay, but the author apparently didn't think it was worth mentioning. Neither would surprise me to be honest.
- On two separate occasions; once near the beginning of the novel and once near the end, Emma describes locking eyes with someone or having her gaze flick to another person. The only problem is that in both of those instances, those people are standing behind her. Honestly, if Emma has eyes in the back of her head, you'd think she would have spotted the truth a lot sooner.
And if all of that somehow wasn't enough, the author still manages to tack on one final head-scratcher. Every loose end has already been neatly wrapped up by the conclusion, yet the book ends on a bizarre cliffhanger whose sole purpose seems to be announcing that there's going to be a sequel. Which left me wondering... what on earth is there possibly left to tell?
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