October 10, 2022
At the start of this bizarre domestic thriller from the pseudonymous Hardy (After All I’ve Done), unhappy housewife Jewelann Jordan encounters surgeon and former classmate Christian Campbell, who broke her heart 17 years earlier, at their 25th high school reunion. A tryst in a hotel room during the reunion proves satisfactory for one party but not the other. Back home in Kettering, Ohio, Jewelann tends to her troubled 16-year-old son, Eli, and her controlling husband, Ken, who travels often for his software-troubleshooting job. To her surprise, Christian shows up and announces that Ken has agreed to rent out their carriage house to him. Jewelann, who keeps many secrets from her husband, ranging from a shopping addiction to her unresolved feelings for Christian, worries Ken will discover everything. Meanwhile, Ken’s increasingly odd behavior leads Jewelann to conclude that he’s having an affair. Readers will struggle to like the whiny and shallow Jewelann, though she becomes more sympathetic as she learns some disturbing things about Ken and Christian. The initially slow plot takes a dizzying number of unlikely twists that lead to a rushed if happy ending. This is for those who have a high tolerance for melodrama. Agent: Lynnette Novak, Seymour Agency.