Review by Booklist Review
Wendy is seriously thinking about murdering her husband. She and Thom have grown so far apart that they've remained married just out of habit . . . and out of a shared tragedy. How did they get to this point? And is there any way to resolve the tension except with one of them dying? Swanson's latest novel is, structurally, his most ambitious: the story is told backwards, starting in the present day and moving back through time, revealing hidden truths, lies, and the one terrible secret Wendy and Thom share, the terrible thing that has kept them together for all these decades. Like in Gillian McAllister's Wrong Place Wrong Time, 2022, Swanson picks his back-in-time moments carefully: each time we see Wendy and Thom, we see them at a key moment in their relationship; and, as their past opens up to us, we slowly see a tragic picture developing. With a pair of deeply engaging characters, a unique story structure, and a powerhouse of an ending, the book is a sure-fire hit.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Swanson's ambitious if uneven latest (after A Talent for Murder) tells a murder mystery in reverse. Thom and Wendy Graves appear to have it all: a beautiful home, flourishing careers, a successful son. There's just one thing: Wendy is planning to kill her husband. Moving from the current decayed state of the Graves' two-and-a-half-decade marriage to its beginning, Swanson takes readers through the couple's birthday celebrations, the birth of their son, the purchase of their first home, and--at the very start of their relationship--a violent decision that bonded them together. As the couple grows younger, readers gain insight into Wendy's coldness and Thom's drunkenness, until they finally learn what, exactly, has tied them to each other through the decades. As is typical for Swanson, there's plenty of shrewd sleight-of-hand, but the book's wily structure is often too clever for its own good, with certain surprises either deflated or overcomplicated by the demands of reverse chronology. The emotional impact, too, is often blunted. The author has done better before. Agent: Nat Sobel, Sobel Weber Assoc. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Swanson (A Talent for Murder) crafts a twisty and clever novel about a diabolical couple who share a deadly secret. What impact could a decades-old bad act have on a marriage? Thom and Wendy Graves are a middle-aged couple seemingly living an ordinary life. They hooked up briefly as teenagers on a class trip, then reunited years later, after the tragic death of Wendy's first husband. Thom is now a tenured faculty member, and Wendy a published poet. They have financial security, a lovely home, a grown son, and a decent marriage. It looks like an idyllic life--but it's not. Thom is a heavy drinker and womanizer, and Wendy fears that he'll let slip their deadly secret while drunk. Thom is consumed with the idea of punishment for bad deeds, while Wendy has no conscience. Swanson disorients readers using an unorganized, nonlinear timeline that spans four decades. Surprise twists also reveal individual bombshells from Thom and Wendy. VERDICT An addictive read brimming with jaw-dropping surprises. The unique timeline will intrigue fans of psychological thrillers.--Mary Todd Chesnut
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A backward-chronology thriller tells the story of a marriage in order to tell the story of a woman's plan to murder her husband. The novel begins in 2023 with the words, "The first attempt at killing her husband was the night of the dinner party." The aspiring murderer is Wendy Graves, once a promising poet. What's making Wendy murderous? Well, she and her English professor husband, Thom, who teaches at a state university in Massachusetts, were hosting a dinner for his colleagues when he divulged to everyone present that he was writing a murder mystery. This was news to Wendy, who slipped into Thom's office mid-party to look on his laptop, where she found a worrisome Word document: "Thom was writing some version of their own story, a story they had agreed wasnever to be shared with anyone." What, exactly,istheir story? The novel toggles between Wendy's and Thom's points of view as the saga of their marriage unfolds in reverse; the plot hits on key events going all the way back to 1982, when Wendy and Thom met as teenagers. Although Swanson takes his time setting up and playing out pivotal scenes, his book is flab-free; a naturalistic-seeming detail in one chapter ends up having a significance that's brought to light in a later (which is to say chronologically earlier) chapter. That the novel is both a meditation on comeuppance and a steely nail-biter jibes with Thom's regularly reported tastes in books and movies: Over the years, his loyalties seem to be evenly split between the literary and the spine-tingling. If Swanson can be said to be pinching from one of Thom's favorite film noirs, it's with total awareness and to sublime effect. A heady, allusive, tweedy-seedy slow burn. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
