This Lucie Whitehouse novel, “Before We Met” takes the reader to London and New York, through a mystery of a husband’s unknown past. Protagonist Hannah is blissfully in love with Mark, but a missed flight home to London propels Hannah to look into the reasons behind it. One clue uncovers another - each one more confusing than the last, until she is forced to piece together the truth.
“Before We Met” takes several twists and turns as an unemployed advertising exec stumbles upon uncovered facts about her new husband. Mark is a successful entrepreneur with some dark secrets. The book unfolds nicely, and is an imaginative “marriage thriller” that has been compared to Gillian Flynn’s “Gone Girl”. While the same genre, unfortunately, Whitehouse’s piece isn’t quite to the same standard.
Whitehouse effectively portrays an eerie feeling of not truly knowing the past of the person you share a bed with, but I found myself wanting more of her secondary characters. Hannah is flawed and developed well - we understand her past, her fears and her state of mind. The story easily guides us through her discovery of unsettling and unimaginable facts of her situation, along with her reluctance to see the truth.
Overall, well-written and an easy-read, regrettably, I was able to predict the ending, and was hoping for a “Gone Girl”-like twist. “Before We Met” is a good book. My expectations were simply set a little too high.
My rating: 3 stars
