Book Review: The New Husband

Synopsis:

What makes Simon Fitch so perfect?

– He knows all her favorite foods, music, and movies.
– Her son likes him. He was there when she needed him most.
– He anticipates her every need.
– He would never betray her like her first husband.

The perfect husband. He checks all the boxes.

The question is, why?

Nina Garrity learned belatedly that her missing husband, Glen, was leading a double life with another woman. And lost his job two years before he disappeared. All that time he just pretended to go to work each day. But with Glen gone — presumed drowned while fishing, his boat was recovered but his body has never been found — she can’t confront him about the affair or his having drained the family finances . . . or seek closure after he blew their family’s life apart.

Now, nearly two years later, Nina has found love again and hopes to put her shattered life back together. Simon, a widower grieving the death of his second wife, swears he has found his dream mate in Nina. His charm and affections help break through the barriers erected by secrets and betrayal. Nina’s teenage son, Connor, embraces Simon as the father figure he wishes his dad would have been. Nina’s friends see a different side to Simon, and they aren’t afraid to use the word obsession.

Nina’s daughter, Maggie, is openly hostile to Simon, a teacher at her school. Nina desperately wants to bridge the divide between them, and believe her life is finally getting back on track.

Soon, however, Nina will discover that the greatest danger to herself and her children is posed by the lies people tell themselves.

Review:

D.J. Palmer is the author of several critically acclaimed suspense novels, including Saving Meghan, and Delirious and Desperate (published as Daniel Palmer). After receiving a master’s degree from Boston University, he spent a decade working in e-commerce before devoting himself to writing.

Like Harlan Coben, Palmer says he always looks for “a hook, a what if question that can carry a narrative” for 300-400 pages. The inspiration for The New Husband came to him in his office as he contemplated a “what if” scenario. He says “it came to me in a flash, a very specific visual that I thought could be the basis of a book, and a specific scene, a pivotal moment in the narrative, that would change the story from being one thing to something else entirely.” The psychological thriller emphasizes family relationships, particularly the mother-daughter bond between Nina and Maggie, and Palmer describes it in three words: “Love is blind.”

As the story opens, things have been rough for thirteen-year-old Maggie. She has been ostracized by her former friends at school. Nearly two years ago, her father, Glen, disappeared without a trace — he never returned home from his regular Saturday morning fishing trip. Even though her mother commenced proceedings to have Glen declared dead, Maggie has never believed that he won’t be back. While she continues mourning her father, her mother, Nina, has entered into a relationship with Simon, the science teacher at Maggie’s school. Worse, they are moving into a new home . . . where Simon will be taking up residence with them.

She just failed to see the danger in front of her, in front of us all. ~~ Maggie

Nina believed that her twenty-year marriage to Glen was a happy one. She gave up her career as a social worker because Glen earned a comfortable living as an investment adviser and amply provided for the family. But everything changed when Glen left one Saturday morning, as was his custom, to go fishing, and a few hours later police officers were on the doorstep bringing Daisy, their beloved dog, home. They informed Nina that Glen’s boat was found abandoned . . . with blood on the deck. Worse, a text message from an unknown sender delivered a photograph of Glen with another woman. Nina learned that Glen had not been employed for nearly two years before he disappeared. Every day, he pretended to go to work but was secretly draining the family accounts in order to make ends meet. Nina believes that Glen is deceased, his body submerged in the lake.

Nina agreed to go on a date with Simon when he brought Daisy home after she apparently slipped out the unlatched front door — a mere twelve weeks after Glen went missing. They have gradually grown closer and Simon wants to marry. Now Nina is out of time and her options are limited. Her financial situation has put her at a crossroads: move to Nebraska to live with her parents or accept Simon’s offer to finance a move into a new home. Nina knows that the transition is going to be difficult, especially for Maggie, who does not like Simon and wants nothing to do with him. She has kept her license to practice social work current and wants to remain in New Hampshire. And she has grown to love Simon, who is doting and attentive, and understands her needs and desires. Indeed, he has an uncanny ability to anticipate them. Still, Nina was profoundly hurt by the revelations of Glen’s duplicity and betrayal, and she’s struggling to achieve the level of intimacy and trust with Simon that he desires. Nina admits to her therapist that she didn’t think she would ever date again after what Glen did to the family. It doesn’t help that Simon’s scent is curiously like Glen’s, conjuring memories of her years with her husband. As time passes, Nina begins to notice troubling behavior by Simon, but she chalks his conflicts with Maggie up to her daughter’s grief about losing her father and refusal to acknowledge that he will not be coming back. Unlike Connor, who readily welcomed Simon into the family and revels in the attention he gets from Simon, but never received from his father. Her lack of self-confidence causes her to excuse her misgivings about Simon’s behavior, blaming herself instead of rationally analyzing his conduct and recognizing how troubling and destructive it is.

Meanwhile, Maggie exasperates Nina by, for example, blaming Simon when her school project goes missing. Because of Nina’s own vulnerability, she chalks Maggie’s misgivings about Simon up to teenage angst, coupled with the ongoing process of grieving Glen. She dismisses Maggie’s claims that Simon is exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior. But Maggie will not be deterred, especially after she sees a dark, but fleeting expression on Simon’s face that frightens her and confirms her suspicions about Simon’s character and capacity for cruelty.

Palmer establishes those conflicts among the characters at the outset and gradually ratchets up the tension through successive encounters and events. He likens the story to a “frog in slow boiling water, which is in reference to the biological phenomenon that if you slowly heat water on a stove, a frog in a pot won’t sense the danger in time to escape.” His stated goal was to set a pace that mirrors real abusive relationships in which the lurking danger is not immediately cognizable. “Each little moment in the book is written to be one degree hotter than the previous until the boil begins.” And it begins in earnest when Palmer reveals what is really happening. At that point, the race is on to see if and which of his characters will discover the truth before it is too late for some or all of them.

Palmer effectively employs alternating narrators to tell the tale. Maggie’s first-person narration is compelling, moving, and authentic. She is a typical teenage girl dealing with extraordinary circumstances. Not only has she lost her father, she is being asked by her mother to adjust to having a new man take up residence in the family home. That man is a teacher at the same school she attends which makes the situation more uncomfortable. Maggie wants nothing to do with Simon. She relates the pain of being ostracized by her friends, and her burgeoning friendship with Ben, a boy on the spectrum who, like her, is not popular but is intelligent, loyal, and supportive. He befriends her in the school lunchroom, and she begins confiding in him. Her believable narrative details her growing suspicion of Simon with her adolescent emotions and logic fully and endearingly on display. She will not be dissuaded, convinced that Simon has ulterior motives and determined to discover and expose them so that her mother will finally believe her and take action.

Nina’s experiences are recounted through a third-person narration and one other narrator appears about halfway through the book, rounding out the various perspectives employed to tell the story.

The tension builds at about the midway point in the story when a major revelation sets the tale on an unexpected trajectory. Once Palmer explains what has actually transpired, his focus turns to whether Nina will believe mounting evidence that she has, because of her gullibility, loneliness, and hurt, placed herself and her children in danger. It’s then a page-turning race to the conclusion. Will Nina recognize that she has been subjected to psychological abuse, gradually and systematically isolated from her support systems, and find the strength to extricate herself . . . before it’s too late?

The New Husband succeeds as a fast-paced, entertaining thriller, as well as a nuanced character study. Palmer convincingly and compassionately portrays a family in crisis, victimized by emotional and psychological abuse, and the manner in which individual family members eventually recognize and respond to the truth. Maggie observes that it is “easy to judge other people. Sit back, look at their choices, and decide what you would have done. . . . [But] until you live it, you don’t know what you would actually do. What you think you’d do is nothing but a fantasy.” Palmer summarizes the message he sought to convey by telling the story of Nina and her family with three sentences contained in Maggie’s concluding thoughts: “Don’t rush to judgment. Have humility. Show empathy.”