I was super excited to read this one ! Thank you so much @netgalley for this arc which I read in two days !
Nina Garrity, Mother to two teenagers is informed that her husband Glen has been declared dead following a boat accident!
His body has never been recovered however !
Fast forward 18 months and we find Nina, her two children and Simon Fitch ( new boyfriend and teacher at her daughters school) moving into a new “family” home!
Connor ( son) immediately bonds with Simon, whereas Maggie sees a darker side to Simon and doesn’t like him . She still holds out hope that her father will return!
I was totally involved with all the characters up to this point and couldn’t wait to find out how they would all blend together with Simon!
Nina returns to work in her field as a social worker and this is where the story turns dark as she uncovers some not so rainbow filled information on Simon !
This is where I started to lose interest as I could predict exactly where this was going and how it was all going to end !
I was almost disappointed when it just so happens that I was right!
This is a great book and I would recommend in a heartbeat!
It’s just that for me, being such a thriller seeker I may have read too many books and find that I can predict accurately how it’s going to end ! I want to be left with my head spinning at the end of a thriller !!!! Give me a book that makes me lose sleep due to its ending ;)
With that said , I would definitely read another one of this author’s book as I was rushing home to keep reading ;)

Hmm... This book seems to be rather polarizing, though I tend to think that the overwhelmingly positive reviews are in reaction to the negative ones, and vice versa? I'm firmly in the middle here. It wasn't offensively bad, but it also wasn't anything to write home about, or anything that will stick with me past... finishing it. I liked the relationship between Maggie and her mother, but I think it went overboard, asking too much of its readers in terms of suspension of disbelief. I think it reads a little immature, but that could also be due to a large part of it being told by a teenager.

D.J. Palmer The New Husband is the perfect way to spend a cold winter day. It’s roller coaster ride through the lives of Nina and her family will warm you soul. Her first husband has been missing for years and there’s a new man in her life. Every thing seems rosey with her new love Simon until her daughter Maggie just can’t deal with this new guy. Things move quickly and you will be flipping pages to the very end.

This book started out a little slow but picked up quickly. About 2/3 of the way in you could pretty much figure out what was going to happen. In spite of that, I really enjoyed this read. It was well written and kept my attention. I wanted to keep reading to see how the author pulled it all together.

This story didn’t break any new ground, as far as thrillers go, but it was still a fun, quick read.
Two years after her cheating husband goes missing, Nina feels like she is finally getting her life back on track. She has recently moved in with a wonderful new man, Simon, who adores her and her two kids. Simon is thoughtful, generous and eager to spend all of his time taking care of his new family. The only problem is that Nina’s daughter, Maggie, HATES him for trying to replace her dad. She is also certain he has a darker side to him and is hell-bent on convincing her mom that Simon isn’t who he claims to be.
Little by little, Nina begins noticing troubling things in her relationship with Simon - she isn’t spending time with her friends, she’s changing her appearance to please him, he’s pressuring her to quit her job - and she begins looking into Simon’s disturbing past. After Maggie’s life is put at risk, Nina can no longer ignore that Simon is not only controlling, but possibly dangerous.
I found this book entertaining and exciting, if not not very surprising. I would recommend it to people who enjoy fun, easy psychological thrillers.
Thanks to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for this ARC.

Nina's husband disappears and evidence leads her and the police to believe he probably abandoned the family due to secretly losing his job two years before his disappearance. Within a couple of months of her husband's disappearance, Nina is in a committed relationship with "too good to be true" Simon, a teacher at her daughter Maggie's school. Maggie is very upset about the relationship for a number of reasons and now, two years into the relationship, friction between Maggie and Simon is just one of the problems Nina is facing.

The story started out slowly, with Nina allowing Simon to pretty much dictate how things were in the relationship but when Nina rekindles her career, Simon starts showing his true colors. Maggie blames Simon for misunderstandings, missed appointments, and other things going on in the household although Nina doesn't want to believe he's causing these problems. But as Nina realizes that Simon does seem to be trying to keep Nina away from her family, friends, work, and anything that keeps her from him, she decides to look further into her husband's disappearance and further into Simon's past, a past that he doesn't want to talk about.

Once Nina develops a backbone and starts thinking for herself, the story got better for me. Maggie is a delight, a smart, creative, young lady with a mind of her own. Her father's abandonment of the family, along with schoolmate jealousies, has her being bullied at school but she's smart enough to know that she has done nothing wrong. She is also smart enough to become friends with Ben, another intelligent, funny, kind, loner...they become best friends and this gives Maggie a stability she doesn't have a home.

Sadly, the last part of the story had me rolling my eyes more than Maggie does, behind Simon's back. Nina gets dumb and I can't stand it when characters start doing dumb stuff and keep on doing dumb stuff. She even knows she's doing it and says so over and over that she needs to do something differently, in italics! During this time in the book, all the kudos go to Daisy and that's all I'm going to say.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for this ARC.

Wow! This book takes you on such a wild ride. Nina's new boyfriend is too good to be true. Or is he?? After her husband Glen disappears/dies, Nina falls in love with Simon. He is everything and more ~ handsome, kind, thoughtful, a good provider. This is a crazy concept but it works. It was so hard to put this book down because you wanted to keep reading to see what was going to occur next. In your wildest dreams, you would never imagine the events that occur. Is Simon really the perfect one? Why doesn't Nina's daughter like him? What really happened to her husband Glen? A great mystery that gets better with each turn of the page.

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for this unpredictable ride of a book! Simon is the definition of a gaslighter, and you'll be rooting against him. Thanks again for this read!

I liked this book even though it seemed to start off slowly.. Keep at it (or it may not seem slow to you) once the story gets really going its great. Nina is enjoying a middle class, two children and a husband happy life, In an instant that changes. Her husband is missing presumed dead. Everything she learns from that day forward about her husband and their life will leave her devastated. All she knew as truth is not.
A new man enters into her life. sweeping her off her feet.. She's not sure she can commit to marriage but she decides her and the two children will share a house with him. Her new love Simon, treats her like a queen. However, even though her son loves him her middle school age daughter Maggie, hates him. She will not cooperate with even trying. Worse yet for her daughter the new man in her mothers life is a teacher at her school. Ostracized by her best friends or who she thought were her best friends, Maggie tries to figure out how to make her mom see that this new man, Simon, is a really bad man. Her brother says she's a drama queen and to get with it but Maggie sets out to prove she's right. Everything she finds Simon explains away easily but he also gives pay back she soon learns. He is not too trifle with and she could end up in a very bad place. She must continue to try non the less. Nina may have caught a glimpse of what her daughter saw as evil and mean but passes it off as imagined. A mistake. This book has good characters, strong story line and once into it you can't put it down. There definitely are surprises! Thank you NetGalley, D.J. Palmer and St Martin Press NY for allowing me to read this ARC this is my honest opinion.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I'm not sure how I feel after this book. This was so twisted and disturbing. I can see this as a Lifetime TV movie. Nina's husband goes missing without a trace, and no signs he is still alive. So she tries to move on with Simon. I immediately didn't trust him, but wasn't expecting how sick things would get. It was a good read, but not a favorite of mine.

You will be drawn in by this suspenseful thriller from the very beginning!

Nina's husband is missing after after going on a fishing trip and never being found. Nina tries to move on with a new man and start a new life. Let the real suspense and creepiness begin!

If you love thrillers then I definitely recommend this story!

Thank you Netgalley for my copy!

Thank for NetGalley for the Advance Reader's Copy of this book. I had read Saving Meghan by the same author so I was excited to read this one.

The main character, Nina, is a mother with two teenage children, Maggie and Connor.. Her husband, Glen, disappeared 17 mothers before and is presumed dead. There are secrets discovered as his disappearance is investigated - he apparently had been involved with another woman and had lost his job 2 years before, without letting his family know.

Nina gets involved with the Social Studies teacher at her children's school, Simon Fitch. Nina becomes very dependent on Simon financially, due to the state of her husband's affairs. They move in together but Maggie is very distrustful of Simon. Part of the story is told in Maggie's perspective. She has seen a side of him that he does not show to her mother. Maggie has also been the subject of bullying at school and is having a rough time, even without the added stress of the teacher's relationship with her mother. When Nina goes back to work to gain some financial independence, all hell starts to break loose at home.

The story builds and builds to a explosive finale. I literally could not stop reading it until I finished it. I highly recommend this book.

After Nina's husband Glen disappears without a trace while fishing, leaving debt and betrayal behind him, Nina is ready for a new start. Simon seems perfect-- a history teacher at her children's school, willing to provide for her and her family, becoming the kind of father to them that they've never had. But Nina's daughter Maggie isn't so easily fooled. Something just seems off about Simon, glimpsed in a rare moment of temper, and Maggie is determined to show her mother the monster he's trying to hide.
This is truly the most disturbing psychological thriller I've read in a while. I was hanging on every word to see what crazy thing Simon would do next, and how much he could get away with and still have Nina stand by him. Then a major twist came halfway through the book that just left me speechless and changed everything. I absolutely could not put this book down!
I received a complimentary copy of this book through Netgalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Publisher's description: Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you know them.

Nina Garrity learned that the hard way after discovering that her missing husband, Glen, had been leading a double life with another woman. But Glen's gone—presumably drowned while fishing on his boat—so she can't confront him about the affair or any of his other misdeeds. A year and a half after the accident, Nina considers herself a widow, even though the police never found a body. Following a chance encounter with Simon Fitch, a teacher from her daughter Maggie's middle school, Nina finds love again and has hopes of putting her shattered life back together.

Simon, a widower still grieving the suicide of his first wife, has found his dream girl in Nina. His charm and affections help break through to a heart hardened by betrayal. Nina's teenage son, Connor, embraces Simon as the father he wishes his dad could have been, but Maggie sees a far darker side to this new man in their lives. Even Nina’s good friends wonder if Simon is supremely devoted—or dangerously possessive.

But Nina is committed, not only to her soon-to-be new husband but also to resuming her former career as a social worker. Before she can move forward, however, Nina must first clear her conscience that she's not making another terrible choice in a man. In doing so, she will uncover the shocking truth: the greatest danger to her, and her children, are the lies people tell themselves.

************
"The New Husband" is the first book I have read by D.J. Palmer, and I'm undecided on whether I will read more. I'm giving this one 2.5 stars (which rounds up to 3) stars. I am sure some readers will love it, as demonstrated by some of the other reviews, but I have really mixed feelings.

***SPOILERS EMBEDDED THROUGHOUT***

Let's start with what I did like. This felt like a new take on an old topic for thrillers. I've read so many novels that start with someone missing, presumed dead, and the book (or movie for that matter) solves the mystery along the way. The difference here is that the book started with the presumed-dead husband, but the wife had already moved on and the book really isn't about what happened to the husband at the start. It's about who the wife had chosen to move on with. In this case, Nina was no longer mourning her "dead" husband Glen. She had fallen in love with Simon and had just moved in with him. Some think it was too soon a year and a half after her husband's death/disappearance, but you can't put a timeframe on fate, right? I was intrigued for sure, and that's what kept me reading.

Where the book fell down for me was that the author gave too much away too soon, which kind of ruined the thrill aspect. I knew from the very first chapter that Glen wasn't dead (it was too obvious), and in chapter 8 (13% into the book), I had figured out that Simon had something to do with Glen's disappearance and that his appearance in Nina's life was no happy accident. It was obvious when Simon started pressuring Nina to change her hair to mimic a model in a magazine that he wanted her to look like someone from his past, and I suspected it was his first wife. There were so many red flags that he wasn't who he pretended to be. Nina -- the licensed social worker -- didn't notice them, constantly making excuses for things that seemed off at first, but her middle school daughter knew that something was wrong? Not very believable. And of course, I was right. I knew all of it before it happened. Even to the point where I knew at the end of the book that, when Nina went to Simon's lake house to look for her missing dog, she was going to linger too long, she was going to find Glen hidden in the secret room in Simon's basement, and Simon was going to get there and trap them both. Of course, the police detective who came to check things out didn't have backup and ended up getting killed, and Nina had to power through and save the day. The idea was intriguing, but the execution was so cliche.

Now for the writing style itself. First and foremost, I just wasn't crazy about the author's "voice," for lack of a better description. It didn't sound like a person really talks and felt like the author was trying too hard. Then there were the points of view for each chapter. Another reviewer mentioned this as well. The chapters rotate -- Nina, Maggie (the daughter), Simon, Glen -- but Maggie's chapters were all in the first person. I also would have preferred if the chapter breaks indicated whose point of view we were in as the chapter title. Chapter 1 would have actually been a prologue since it's 17 months before the rest of the book, but then Chapter 2: Nina, Chapter 3: Nina, Chapter 4: Nina, Chapter 5: Maggie, etc. And the book has an Epilogue of Maggie's college essay (so YEARS later). Maybe this was why Maggie's chapters were in the first person, because her essay would be in the first person, but I found the whole chapter to be preachy and irrelevant, so it really wasn't necessary to make her chapters first-person point of view.

There were also number of elements that would require a pretty substantial rewrite.

Chapter 1 started with Anthony Strauss finding Glen's abandoned boat with blood all over the deck and the dog barking at something on the shoreline. We had no idea who Anthony was, and he never appeared anywhere else in the book. If he was so non-essential, the police should have found the boat, or Nina, or one of the kids, someone who had standing in the story. As I mentioned, the boat was covered in blood, but the police never found a body, so they assume Glen drowned? "The deck was covered in deep red. How odd, Anthony thought, until his mind clicked over. A gasp rose in his throat as a sickening realization set in. Anthony had gutted plenty of fish in his day, but none had ever bled like that." And Nina tells her therapist later that they ALL thought Glen had drowned. Umm...how was a blood-covered boat NOT a suspected murder scene?

Simon had two previous wives (not one, as indicated in the description). Allison ran off and was never heard from again, and Emma committed suicide. We heard a lot about Allison, but no one ever finds out where she went or what happened to her. Since she's the start of Simon's story, I think it's pretty important that Nina find her during the course of this book. And at one point while she was in Simon's lake house, Nina saw three photos in on the wall, all looking eerily similar. She identified her own photo and Emma's, but she looked at the first photo and whispered "Who are you?" WHAT?! Nina had talked to her therapist about Allison! She knew about Allison! (I suspect it's possible that the original storyline only had one ex-wife, based on the description, and the second ex was added, but then the book needs some serious editing.)

Finally, while Nina, Simon, and Glen were all in the secret room where Glen was held captive, Simon told Nina about $200,000 in cash in the closet upstairs. It was Emma's money, and thanks to her will, now it was Simon's money, and they can take it and run away together. Once Nina killed Simon and Glen was on the mend in the hospital, Glen and Nina were talking about what they were going to do, and Nina said they would rebuild. Glen wanted to know how because he didn't have a job, and up until very recently, Simon had provided for Nina (she had just gone back to work as a social worker because she didn't want to rely on anyone else to support her family, so she really didn't have anything.) Nina smiled and told Glen that when she went upstairs to call the police, she looked for the money in the closet and put it in her car. Glen told her she was a clever girl, and Nina said they "deserved" the money. She planned to fund drug treatment in Emma's brother's name (he died of a drug overdose), provide for the police detective's widow, and fund an effort to find Allison. Considering that she and Glen had no money to speak of, they expected that $200K to go pretty far. But despite the fact that she had charitable plans for some of the money, just the fact that she took it because they deserve it and Glen went with it, in my opinion, made them both instantly unsympathetic.

That's my take on this one. Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. This title will be available for purchase on April 14, 2020.

Oh holy f***. The book starts out with a bang and slowly ratchets up the tension and suspense while making me want to scream at Nina the entire time. The amount of gaslighting she accepts without question, the disbelief in Maggie, the excuses...it all frustrated me so much but I could also understand how easy it is for others to fall victim to a similar trap. Thanks to the author, I’ll now distrust any guy I ever meet and question my memory of past conversations. I had one small issue with the ending related to the police officer, but otherwise, this book succeeding in making me want to keep reading late into the night...with one eye open.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.

The first part of the book was pretty slow. It took me awhile to get through the book, I stopped reading it several times wondering if I wanted to finish it. I did finish it because I wanted to know how it was going to end.
The story is very creepy/twisty as you get about half way in. In my head I was wondering about a few different ways this could be going but the way it went really surprised me.
An interesting mystery/suspense that will keep you on the edge of your seat....
I have to say I didn’t dislike this book, it just wasn’t a favorite.
Many thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read and review this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

Never wanted to put this book down. Such a good thriller! I highly recommend this book, and I look forward to reading more by this author.

I didn't read reviews before I read this because when a book is labeled a thriller, I don't want to have spoilers revealed. But I did read a lot of reviews before starting mine because I wanted to see if people noticed the same things I did.

To me, it was odd that when we were in Nina's perspective we were in the third person, but when we were in her daughter Maggie's perspective, we were in the first person, and I imagine that was difficult to write switching narratives as such. Also, I didn't love how suddenly a chapter would be Maggie's perspective, but we only know that from reading the text (it would be nice to let the readers know, hey, I'm switching perspectives and narrative here for a chapter...) Connor wasn't much of a character, yes he came into play later on in the book, but he was mostly just there, and that's okay because this really is Maggie and Nina's story. Randomly, what 13-year-old calls a remote a clicker?

And I'm trying to avoid spoiling for other people but come on, the creep vibes were from the start! And I thought that was really interesting of Palmer to not create an air of mystery but rather flat out start with this vibe, that screamed danger, no thank you, move along! And I'm left wondering if I'm the only one that sees this or not because I'm not seeing it in the other reviews I'm reading.

This quote is the perfect tagline for the book "Just because you love someone doesn't mean you know them." Because yes, yes, Nina, yes. Get on board with the program Nina. I've written all this and noticed I didn't do my normal summary, and I think you get the gist from the summary that there's a lot of creep, a lot of signals being ignored, children being ignored, and there's an excellent vibe coming off this book that says "definitely read me but be prepared we're going to get weird in some elements of the writing style and with the story itself." Bare with it, it is a bit slow in some places but it does get better. Well Done. Thank you St. Martin's Press for this little gem, I tend to always dig their reads so that's why I request them a lot.

I absolutely loved this book! I love characters where I just love to hate them and that was exactly Simon! It’s a roller coaster of a ride from the start! It always kept me up late not waiting to stop reading and when I did I would pick it right back up! I loved Saving Meghan but this one really upped the game in the domestic thriller category!! It’s a must read!!!

OMG insanely good is the best way I can describe this book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Wow I was hooked from the first page and cheering daughter Maggie on with her suspicions about her weird, creepy future stepdad!!!!!!! Nina's husband had a boating accident but there is no body to be found. After 2 yrs she has him declared dead so she and her two children can move on with their lives without their father and husband. She has met a new man who seems amazing to her and her son. Maggie her daughter does not like him though and is very suspicious of him. He seems way too good to be true and as most of us know that means he usually is. This new man is a manipulative, controlling freak and you will be reading this one well into the night to find out what happens. Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for my honest review.