The Marriage Rule
A Novel
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- $169.00
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- $169.00
Descripción editorial
After you say, “I do,” there’s one more thing you must do. . . .
A propulsive domestic thriller about what it takes to keep marriages together and what will tear them apart from “addictive” (People) author Helen Monks Takhar
This Random House Book Club edition includes an author’s note and a discussion guide.
Nine months into motherhood, Elle is struggling. She’s battling being sidelined at work, fighting to feel at home in her post-baby body and feeling pressure to be intimate with her adoring husband, Dom. Why does everything seem so hard, especially when Dom is such a helpful, hands-on dad as well as an ever-attentive husband?
Elle turns to her charismatic new colleague, Gabriel, to get through the day and red wine to soothe her at night. For a while, the distractions work until one night she wakes up bleary-eyed in a hotel room next to a man who’s not her husband. A dead man who’s not her husband.
Elle realizes Dom is the only person who can help her escape the hotel room with her future intact. She also knows she’d never have found herself next to the dead man if she’d followed The Marriage Rule, the one thing she’s been told a wife needs to do to keep her marriage alive.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this rote domestic thriller from Monks Takhar (Nothing Without Me), Elle Graham starts to crack under the pressure of balancing work, new motherhood, and devotion to her picture-perfect husband. While drowning the stress of her copywriting job and constant criticism from her mother-in-law with copious amounts of booze, Elle checks in to a ritzy hotel for an overnight stay. After a night of wine and decadent food, she awakes to find the naked, bloodied body of her odious boss, Anton Bloch, next to her. With no memory of the events that unfolded hours earlier, she fears that the bite marks on her body and the soreness she feels are evidence that Anton raped her. Desperate, she calls Dom, who vows to do whatever it takes to keep her from being implicated in the crime—but as time goes on, Elle becomes less sure who's on her side. The plot is light on genuine surprises, and the excessive timeline-shifting feels more like smoke and mirrors than skillful storytelling. Monks Takhar has done better before.
