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by Christobel Kent
"Be careful, Fran," the man said quietly. "About what you think you know."
In a dilapidated farmhouse out in the vast waterlogged plains of the English Fenlands, Fran awakes groggily to her baby's cries one February night and finds the bed empty beside her. Her husband, Nathan, is gone.
Moving uneasily through the drafty rooms, searching for her husband, Fran soon makes a devastating discovery that upends her marriage and any semblance of safety. As she tries desperately to make sense of what happened to Nathan, Fran is forced to delve dangerously into the undercurrents of his claustrophobic hometown and question how well she knew him in the first place. Fran, increasingly isolated, grows paranoid - but Nathan isn't the only one hiding something. Though she can't tell a soul, Fran is shielding a damning secret of her own: a hazy, dreamlike memory from the night of Nathan's disappearance that might be the key to it all.
From the bestselling author of The Crooked House comes an utterly gripping psychological thriller spanning the traditions of Daphne du Maurier and S. J. Watson. Christobel Kent's The Loving Husband is spooky and skillfully written, dragging readers deep into the unsettling world of the Fens and into a marriage of half-truths and past lives, where no one can be trusted--especially not your spouse.
"Starred Review. While the plot, and even the characters, may sound borderline cliché, there is something about Fran's complexity that sets this one apart and makes for a truly chilling, absorbing read." - Kirkus
"The plot features some clever twists, and though Kent doesn't fully earn her ending, she's crafted an emotionally charged mystery that will keep readers guessing until the final chapter." - Publishers Weekly
"Kent (The Crooked House, 2016) intensifies Fran's alienation with a steadily darkening atmosphere and foreboding sense of place that cleverly disguises red herrings. A creepy, addictive read for fans of S. J. Watson's Before I Go to Sleep (2011) and Clare Mackintosh's I Let You Go (2016)." - Booklist
This information about The Loving Husband was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Christobel Kent was born in London and grew up in London and Essex, including a stint on the Essex coast on a Thames barge with three siblings and four stepsiblings, before studying English at Cambridge. She has worked in publishing and as a TEFL teacher, and has lived in Italy, where she set several novels, including The Drowning River and A Murder in Tuscany. She lives in Cambridge with her husband and their five children.
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