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Author: Fiona Barton

She remembers the moment he died: a simple point in an ordinary day, despite the undercurrents, when the car came out of nowhere. And now the reporters won’t leave her alone. Now everyone knows she was the wife of THAT MAN, and they want to know if it is true about what he did. They want to know what it is she knew. About the girl. About the kidnapping and the hidden body. But Jean isn’t saying anything; she’s stood by her man this far, hasn’t she? But maybe everything is different now? When ambitious journalist Kate Waters worms her way into Jean’s trust and affection, the widow starts to wonder if maybe it’s okay to come clean now. If maybe the dead don’t need, or deserve, protection. If maybe she can stop lying to herself.

I started the Kate Waters series with book 2, The Child, which I had discovered through Book of the Month. I didn’t quite hate The Child, but I was less than impressed. The story was depressing and unnecessarily slow, populated with a host of unlikable characters, the get-the-story-at-any-cost Kate Waters being the one I disliked most. I decided not to read this series further, so imagine my surprise when I found The Widow downloaded on my Audible queue. I forgot I had done that before reading The Child. Oh well, I’d paid for it, so I would read (or in this case listen to) it. I didn’t. Imagine my surprise when I found The Widow to be decidedly slow, yes, but nonetheless captivating in a very dark, very engrossing way. I guess sometimes a series deserves a second chance.

woman looking out windowKate, thankfully, is more of a catalyst than a real character here. She’s still all about herself, the usual prototype of a journalist seeking a scoop, damn the human wreckage. She is also pseudo-entertaining the idea of an affair, sans guilt or any complicating factors. But it doesn’t matter if we like or loath Kate, because here the victim – this widow named Jean Taylor – is the star of the story.

Jean isn’t exactly likable either, you certainly don’t want to be friends with her, and the morality of her actions don’t fall into any neat category of “right” or “wrong.” But Jean is complex and haunted, strong in some ways and desperately battered in others, making her an intense character study. You see, Jean has always wanted a baby more than anything else, and she’ll put the blinders on to negate the unacceptable: her husband’s Internet searches, the accusations surrounding him. How could the man she loves, the man whom she sleeps by at night and sits at the table with during the day, be a pedophile and a murderer? Impossible. And here we have the true force of the story, how people confronted by monsters in their midst cannot bear to see them. It’s an interesting take, one that is emotive and deeply disturbing.

worn teddy bearWhile doing a character study on Jean’s conflict and outright denial, as well as the ways in which her husband leads her on and preys on her weaknesses and desires, the story also asks the question: is it true? We watch Kate, police, and Jean all look at the evidence from different angles, finding dead ends here and there. The evidence against Jean’s husband is incriminating but not necessarily provable. It all leads to the old question: how well do you really know a person? And with no actual body – how can anything really be known? Everyone is a suspect, everyone is cagey, and only Jean knows the true answer, if she can bear to look deep enough and find it.

The story is slow but intense, raw and a bit devious. It’s hard to tell if Jean is the victim or the enabler. The answer of the whodunit is clear from the beginning, and the unfolding of the story is less about that and more about the lies of a flawed relationship and the battered women who, for various reasons, allow themselves to be taken in and stay with a bad man. There are lots of triggers here – pedophilia and emotional abuse among them – and The Widow is not a light read. It’s not explicit, but it is very, very dark. Recommended, but with caution.

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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