EMMA had everything… until she didn’t.
Emma was successful, smart, savvy, sensible, secure, practical, confident, and happy… until she wasn’t.
What would make an intelligent and sensible person start to question everything, almost overnight?Her new marriage was everything she could have ever wanted – and more.
He is a widower, and Emma seems connected, somehow drawn to the memory of his first wife.
She begins to doubt herself.
How could she, as a middle-aged, slightly dull woman, compete with the youth, beauty and glamour of his great love?
A little doubt and insecurity are normal, aren’t they?
Until things take a darker turn.
Emma doubts EVERYTHING she has ever known: her husband, her friends, her job performance, her memory, her sense of self. Even her own sanity.
She is far too sensible to be chasing a “ghost”. Or is she?
My first impression of this book was an echo of Daphne du Maurier’s classic, Rebecca, where an unnamed narrator is haunted by the (imagined) frozen-in-time perfection of her husband’s dead wife.
When the dead wife in this case was also called Rebecca (Becky), I thought I knew where this was going…
I was a whole lot of wrong.
It puts an original twist on a story that you think you know: one that I did not see coming.
As Emma questions everything, so does the reader.
Is Emma merely jealous and insecure?
Or is there something more sinister going on?
Who do we trust?
Is Emma herself a reliable narrator? (Can we trust her?)
Is this an overactive imagination at work?
Or is there real danger? If so, from who (or what)?
The obvious answer was simultaneously right and completely wrong.
It is not what you think (or is it?), and then added information hits you and you just do not know what to think. Twist after twist and you see things differently after each one.
First Wife’s Shadow is both a cracking, entertaining read and a compelling insight into the sacredness of the self. How well do we really know ourselves?
What might it take – and it is not as much as you might think: a little prodding and a deviation from routine – to unravel that carefully built-up self-image?
It is an interesting psychological question… for us all.
A solid four stars, only because I guessed the final twist. (Can you?)
Otherwise, it could have been four and a half.
