You Should Have Known, Jean Hanff Jorelitz
Amanda
Published March 18 2014 by Grand Central Publishing
448 Pages
Source, NetGalley
From Goodreads…
Grace Reinhart Sachs is living the only life she ever wanted for herself. Devoted to her husband, a pediatric oncologist at a major cancer hospital, their young son Henry, and the patients she sees in her therapy practice, her days are full of familiar things: she lives in the very New York apartment in which she was raised, and sends Henry to the school she herself once attended. Dismayed by the ways in which women delude themselves, Grace is also the author of a book You Already Know, in which she cautions women to really hear what men are trying to tell them. But weeks before the book is published a chasm opens in her own life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only an ongoing chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster, and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself.
I think I expected this book to be something that it was not, and that was a failure on my part not the book. I read this “a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only an ongoing chain of terrible revelations” and thought this was going to be a thriller. You Should Have Known is not a thriller. Once I figured that out, I did like the book better.
In this book Grace has to face some horrible truths about her own life and take steps to move forward. Grace was not a totally likeable character for me in the beginning of this book, and maybe that was due in part to my expecting more action when things started happening in her life. I don’t want to say too much without giving away the plot-but let me tell you that I think you would have acted too!
As the book begins Grace is about to have her book published, which chastens women for choosing partners they know are wrong from them from the very beginning. I thought this was a great juxtaposition to Grace reflecting on her own life throughout the story. I liked being deep in Grace’s thoughts, but they didn’t always make Grace deeply likeable. Its hard to root for a character that you don’t like too much, but I came around on Grace in the end. I think that’s a sign of a well written character-that even when its someone you don’t like you still want to know what will happen.
I wanted more resolution at the conclusion of this book, but perhaps that goes back to my thinking I was reading a thriller. Check this out and tell me what you thought of Grace!
3 Stars!
Thank you Grand Central Publishing and NetGalley for this copy to review!
PS Goodreads has a giveaway of this! Ends 4/19 so enter today!
Gun In Act One 