Review
by Deb Czajkowski
Today was the last day of school before
summer vacation for elementary school teacher Jacqueline “Jacks” Morales. An
exciting day, to be sure. But in the grand scheme of things, it is really just
another day in Jacks’ life ─an ordinary day, really. She goes home and, as she does multiple times
each day, calls her sister, Beth, to regale her with funny stories from her
day. Still chatting with Beth, there’s a knock on her door, and Jacks finds two
police officers waiting on the other side. And her day isn’t ordinary any more.
First, they tell Jacks that James, her
husband of eight years, has been killed in a car accident in Maui. Yeah, that’s
seriously bad, collapse-on-the-floor shocking bad news. Wait. Did the officer
say Maui? James was away on business,
yes, but in Kansas.
“Are
you sure it’s my husband, James?” “Yes,
Ma’am.”
“And
the accident was in Maui?” “Yes, Ma’am. And,
um, he wasn’t alone.”
Jacks is still trying to grasp that she
is now a widow, but even harder still, to comprehend the other stunning
information ─James was having an affair?
He was in Maui with her? His last days, his last minutes on
this earth were with her? ─when
there’s another knock on her door. The
man identifies himself as Nick Ford, the fiancé of Dylan Matthews, the woman
with James in Maui, the second victim in that fatal car accident.
Nick says he wants more information and
his idea for getting it is to go to Maui, to retrace the steps that James and
Dylan took. He’s thinking that Jacks
must feel the same way, and he’s hoping that Jacks will go with him. Jacks’
first reaction is that he’s crazy! This
idea is crazy! It is, right? Seriously, she doesn’t even know this man!
But Jacks’ desire to be where James was
in his last moments, to learn what she can about this woman he was with when he
died, and to (hopefully) get some closure wins out. Is closure actually possible, given what she
knows, what she doesn’t know? Can she
trust Nick, a man she just met? One way to find out: Jacks and Nick are off to
Maui.
In The
Good Widow authors Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke start the novel right off
with the problem. In truth, Jacks has two
problems: sudden widowhood and James’
mistress. Then the journey ─surely a painful and heartbreakingly difficult one
for Jacks and Nick ─begins. The journey to
get answers, to find the truth. The journey to understand. The journey to reach
the other side of tragedy and grief.
So sad, I know, but we’re going to Maui
(if only through the pages of this book)! As we, along with Jacks and Nick,
follow the itinerary that James and Dylan took, we meet people who remember
‘friends’ James and Dylan. With each
observation or conversation that is disclosed, more and more pieces of the
puzzle are added.
Fenton and Steinke do a wonderful job
of moving The Good Widow forward in
present time, but also taking us back into the past to fill in the before
story. Just when I thought I knew where the future was going, something from
the past would come to light to surprise me.
I very much enjoyed the Maui site-seeing adventures, but the unfolding
drama of Jacks’ and Nick’s exploration really kept me turning the pages.
Think you got it all figured out? Maybe, but maybe not! You’ll only know for
sure if you read the book. And you do want to read The Good Widow!
Purchase the book at:
About
the authors:
Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke
are the authors of the forthcoming suspense novel, The Good Widow, to be published
by Lake Union on June 1, 2017. You can pre-order it here! Liz and Lisa have
been best friends for over 25
years. They created this website to celebrate books women (and men!) love
and to have a place to talk shit about reality TV stars. They have
also published three novels with Simon & Schuster/Atria Books. Your Perfect Life is a hilarious and heartwarming story of two
childhood best friends who switch bodies at their twenty-year high school
reunion. The Status of All Things, is a cautionary
tale of a woman who realizes she can change the course of her entire life by
what she writes in her Facebook status. And The Year We Turned Forty follows three women who get the chance to relive the year
they turned forty, a year they each made decisions that altered the course of
their lives. But a lot happened before their first
publishing deal…
Connect with the authors at:
Goldberg McDuffie is giving
2 lucky winners a print copy of
The Good Widow by Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke
