[Review] Till Death Do Us Part - Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

Summary:Ten years ago, June’s beloved husband drowned on their honeymoon, his body never found. Now, a decade later, June is finally ready to move on. She owns a natural wine bar in Brooklyn and is engaged to a patient, supportive man named Kyle. She’s excited to finally begin a new chapter in her life and start a family.

But out of the blue, she sees him—Josh, her first husband. Is this just a hallucination from the guilt June carries about finally moving on, or is it possible that her husband never died in the first place?

June tries to forget about this vision, chalking it up to grief and nerves, but soon enough, she stumbles across a website for a winery in Napa, and the owner in the photo is identical to her dead husband. With her upcoming wedding looming and a fiancé who’s already worried she hasn’t quite left her past behind, June secretly flies to Napa for answers. But she’s not prepared for all the secrets she’s about to unlock because everything she thought she knew about her first love is a lie. (Pub Date: Aug 13, 2024)

 

Laurie Elizabeth Flynn was the author of one of the first books I got the ARC to review because I really wanted and not just to gain experience. Although I had enjoyed a lot the story, I somehow failed to catch her later releases on my radar until this one. And though the genre is completely different from the YA back then, her style continues to charm me.

3+

June lost the love of her life in an accident she still can't believe to have been just an accident. They had just gotten married and his family never got to accept her in a way that soon they had no more contact, although June never stopped suspecting the circumstances. Years later, she's finally about to marry again when she sees someone who looks just like her late husband. She follows him to a winery, and it can't be a coincidence it's at the same place her husband's family used to own one. As the mystery unfolds, it only gets scarier, each discovery seems like a punch on the memory of her husband. Does June really want to know the truth?

This wasn't a masterpiece. At times, it made irritated me more than made me curious how many times they teased us with secrets. I wish the text had been more subtle about them, but it would repeatedly say: something happened here and we're not telling yet.

By the way, this is narrated from two points of view, June in the present days, going after the double of her husband, and her husband's mother Bev, back when he was still a teenager and something terrible seems to have happened that started to make them fall apart. Bev is bisexual but torn about living life as she really is, her parts are pretty much about self-discovery, like a late coming-of-age, as it reveals to us the pieces of the puzzle June is trying to put together so many years and events later. I don't know if I liked this mix of genres. Each story was interesting on its own but it made me feel like I was reading two books at once—which I'm not a fan of doing because I tend to forget why I enjoy each of the books. 

The conclusion makes sense and it was actually a good answer to everything, but there were so many twists that I don't know anymore what to think of the characters. Some of them didn't sound so believable to me either. 

This story had me curious to the last page but it could have been more enjoyable if made less convoluted. It's still one of the good.

Honest review based on an ARC provided by Netgalley. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity.

Rating: 3 out of 5.