Grace Reinhart is a couples therapist in New York City on the cusp of making the big time with a book that’s getting lots of buzz entitled You Should Have Known. The book is about how couples who face discord later in a marriage really should have seen it coming from the start-- the clues are always there, the fatal personality and relationship flaws obvious from the get-go, but somehow signs are ignored, until later down the line it all goes “kerflooey”. Grace’s professional standing, her modest but comfortable Upper East Side apartment, son in an exclusive Manhattan private school, husband a doctor with at a prestigious hospital—it all seems so perfect and her bio should look rather nice on the jacket flap of her soon-to-be New York Times bestselling title. But the advice she doles out to her patients and records in her book come back to haunt her—you really should have known, Grace Reinhart.
At times this novel almost reads like Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train, but about three quarters of the way through it downshifts and the narrative tension decrescendos rather quickly. I like the characters the author creates, entering Grace’s New York neighborhood, and seeing events unfold in her eyes. If Grace had met up with her husband in the last half of the book, it might have made a better read. But maybe the way it was written was more true to life.
Comments
Post a Comment