The Soulmate
Sally Hepworth
336 pages
St. Martin’s Press
Published April 4, 2023
Amazon | Goodreads
Sally Hepworth can be hit or miss for me. I loved The Good Sister and thought a little less of The Younger Wife. This one falls between the two for me. It is a solid story and I love her writing style. It is just so easy to read. But It seems like mental illness gets the short end of things in this one. I thought she was phenomenal when writing an on the spectrum character in The Good Sister. She showcased Fern’s struggle in life without making it a social issue, while in this one mental illness gets the bad end of the stick. I did read about her research and personal experience on the subject and still felt this way. But that was really all I didn’t like.
She does such a good job of setting the scene of the house on the cliff. I felt like I could see and feel it. So many secrets and lies and I didn’t see some of them coming. She is so good at giving you all the details you need to know and framing them in a way that you can’t piece the truth together until the end. The dual POVs of Gabe’s wife and the suicide jumper does a great job of showing Gabe’s actions without him being a narrator.
Not only are we reading about the suicide cliff, but the inner workings of the marriages of the two couples and how mental issues can affect a marriage. While I didn’t love the characters, I was caught up in how this one would play out and I read it in a couple of days.
I was lucky enough to have both a reading and listening copy and loved both equally and flipped back and forth as my schedule permitted. I’m such a sucker for accents and thought both Barrie Kreinik; Jessica Douglas-Henry did a great job of making the story come alive.
As always I was entertained and can’t wait to read her next book.
About the book
Get ready for a thrilling, addictive novel about marriage, betrayal, and the secrets that push us to the edge in Sally Hepworth’s The Soulmate.
There’s a cottage on a cliff. Gabe and Pippa’s dream home in a sleepy coastal town. But their perfect house hides something sinister. The tall cliffs have become a popular spot for people to end their lives. Night after night Gabe comes to their rescue, literally talking them off the ledge. Until he doesn’t.
When Pippa discovers Gabe knew the victim, the questions spiral…Did the victim jump? Was she pushed?
And would Gabe, the love of Pippa’s life, her soulmate…lie? As the perfect facade of their marriage begins to crack, the deepest and darkest secrets begin to unravel.
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