Henrietta Thornton

Jamie Spellman is dead and nobody’s sorry. The women in his life are not only fine with the loss, we find eight of them sitting in a disused room above a Manchester pub with Jamie’s head on the table before them, a smell of “rot and pennies” in the air. One of them probably did the gruesome deed, but it’s hard to tell who when the story of each woman’s awful interactions with loathsome Jamie gets underway. It could have been his wife, Sadia; god knows he treated her badly enough. But Kaysha, the journalist investigating the story, knows that even though it’s always the spouse, the other women had equally valid reasons to hasten Jamie’s end. Another possibility is the teenager he was stringing along. Or maybe the mother who’s lost a daughter thanks to Jamie. Everyone’s got a story, and as they unspool, a lot is squeezed in, from infertility to alcoholism and from anger-fueled affairs to vicious gaslighting. It all comes together to link the women, whose stories converge in a way that will appeal to Kate Atkinson’s readers, and to create an ending that brings us back to that head on the table, but in a twisting, unexpected way. This debut author is one to watch.

Librarian Jenn thinks her husband, Rick, will be thrilled with his birthday gift. He’s often wistfully mentioned his days as an avid surfer, when he hated leaving the beach, always staying for “just one more” wave. But when Jenn shows him the phrase “just one more” tattooed on her shoulder, he says she’s a tramp. And to Jenn’s further shock and puzzlement, he says he’s never surfed. A chill sets into the newlyweds’ days, with Rick becoming more distant and controlling. But surely things will improve, thinks Jenn, if she does her best. When she finally feels ready to ask when they should start to try having children, which they’ve decided is in the cards, she’s dismayed to hear him say that he’s been clear that he never wanted kids. That increasingly red-flag-filled saga is one half of this rollercoaster tale; the other part is narrated by Jenn’s best friend, Becca, who in the beginning of the book arrives at Jenn’s house to find her drowned in the bathtub. The two women’s investigations—Jenn’s library research on her husband’s past and Becca’s digging into what happened to Jenn—unfurl in tandem, an effective device that allows the narratives to complement each other’s details and tone and enables the women to seemingly work together across the time lines. Just wait for that satisfying ending.