I started reading it when we got in the car. Of the two books I had purchased at Joy of Books, a used bookstore in Hendersonville, NC, this was the one that the clerk said she loved. I was more exited about it too, so I read on the way back to our little stone cottage in Saluda. I read while we he watched TV and dozed until dinner. It was intriguing, sexy, and not at all what I had expected from a glance at the cover and title.
Ralph has plans for Catherine as well. He's going to marry her. Treat her well. And send her off to bring back his long-lost son.
Catherine Land has a plan. She's going to marry the rich and lonely Ralph Truitt. She saw his advertisement in a Chicago paper looking for a "reliable wife" and she responded. Catherine wrote to him, telling him that she was a "simple, honest woman" whose father was a missionary and who isn't looking for love. Just practicality. Out of the many replies he gets, Ralph chooses her. Ralph doesn't know that Catherine also plans to murder him with a poison she keeps in her old suitcase. She plans to marry him, kill him, and inherit his riches so she can live a live of luxury. A life of opium, champagne, and oysters with her lover.
She knows the beginning and she knows the end. It's the middle she's not so sure about.
She knows the beginning and she knows the end. It's the middle she's not so sure about.
Ralph has plans for Catherine as well. He's going to marry her. Treat her well. And send her off to bring back his long-lost son.
Ralph and Catherine marry each other as a means to their own personal ends, but neither one gets what they thought they had signed up for.
A Reliable Wife is a novel that has reminded me how much I love to read; how much I love to get lost in a book. I didn't even have to close my eyes to feel that I was in that freezing cold Wisconsin winter with them.
The story did not play out at all like I expected, but ended just how I had hoped it would. Exciting me all through the middle chapters and leaving me guessing until the very end. I closed the book feeling happy and satisfied.
This book was billed as "engrossing and addictive"on NPR's Morning Edition and I couldn't agree more. I couldn't put it down. And really, I'm left hoping that someone makes it into a movie. I said to Mike, in the middle of reading it, that A Reliable Wife would make an excellent movie. In the meantime, to find out what happens, there's no movie to watch. You'll just have to read the book. It's a good one.
...but you don't have to take my word for it! (Sorry. Couldn't help that one. ^_^)
"So take a look; it's in a book!"
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