was late in requesting a copy of The Marriage Lie, between the impending holidays and my slower reading pace, I didn’t realize Kimberly Belle had a new book coming out. I rushed to request any copy, e galley, print ARC, and thankfully the good people at MIRA were gracious to send me a print copy. I’ve read and loved Kimberly’s first two books, so I had high hopes for this one. Oh my stars….what a fast paced, who the hell is the man I married, book this is!!

Iris is gobsmacked, honestly no one expects to learn their spouse has deceived them, but to lie about a trip, to even concoct an event flier, all part of an elaborate lie to cover up what? In the midst of haze filled days, Iris mourns but keeps questioning. She attends a mass memorial service for the deceased of flight 23, and there she meets other families and a man who says he was a friend and workout buddy of Will. Iris has never heard of this man. Will his relationship with Will help her uncover the reasons for his lies?

With the help of her twin brother Dave, Iris begins looking for anything to give her answers to questions she didn’t know she had. Is it odd that her husband seems to leave no personal affects lying around, never any odd receipts or random business cards or pieces of paper? Searching through files and recalling things from their life together Iris and Dave uncover just a few secrets, but when the head to Seattle the lies begin to spill out….and Iris isn’t sure she knew Will at all.

I enjoyed every minute of this book, it read quickly and of course when reading you can’t wait to see what happens next. Kimberly Belle has once again kept me up late reading and holding my breath until the last page, and oh what an ending! I highly recommend The Marriage Lie if you’re a fan of thrillers and mysteries. I have loved sharing my thoughts with several friends looking for new books to read post Holiday.

Other books by Kimberly Belle- The Last Breath, The Ones We Trust

Thanks so much to NetGalley, the publisher and author for the opportunity to read this book - I loved it!

Iris and Will have the perfect marriage - madly in love, both have great jobs, a beautiful home in Atlanta and want to start a family. Then Will heads off to Orlando for a conference for work. Meanwhile, a plane crashes leaving from the same airport heading to Seattle killing everyone one board - and Will is listed as being on board.

Iris is devastated with grief but at the same time she can't figure out why Will was on a plane to Seattle instead of Orlando. She starts investigating, with the help of her twin, and finds out that Will might not have been who she thought he was.

I don't want to give anymore away because I raced through this book to figure out what happened and loved it. Suspenseful but also very thought-provoking to put yourself in Iris' position and wonder what you might do.

Highly recommended!

Iris and Will have a great marriage and are madly in love. So when he’s announced dead after a plane wreck, Iris can’t believe it.

For one, the plane was headed to Seattle but he said he was going to Florida. And two, why would he lie? And three, if he did lie, was he really even on that plane that crashed? So many unanswered questions and Iris doesn’t quite know where to start. Iris thinks there must be some kind of big misunderstanding but as she digs into Will’s past she starts to wonder if she knows her husband at all.

The Marriage Lie by Kimberly Belle is a page turner of a novel as you keep reading to find out what happened to Will. I love a good mystery like this one and of course I tried to figure everything out ahead of time but I didn’t quite get it right. The perfect book to read on a rainy weekend!

Iris and Will are in love, even after seven years of marriage. Their life in Atlanta, her as a private school psychologist and him as a technology security specialist, is about as idyllic as it can get. On the day Will leaves for a technology conference in Florida, he gives Iris a very special ring that symbolizes their hope for a baby together. On that same day, he is one of the listed passengers on a flight to Seattle which crashes, killing all on board.

Iris spends the next several weeks cycling between horrible grief and disbelief that her husband is actually dead. Various clues, including both threatening and supportive text messages, add to her sense that somehow the reports of her husband's death are greatly exaggerated. Her twin brother supports her as she struggles to follow up on the question of why her husband was on the plane to Seattle. What she finds in this search causes her to wonder if she had any idea who her husband actually was.

The suspense builds as the reader is caught up in the lies that Will seems to have woven together into a false life. Iris continues to ask herself, however, why Will would have created a second life, why he would have gotten on that plane headed in the wrong direction, and whether he actually died in the crash. Her investigations place her squarely in the center of a deadly target, but who is aiming at her? The one thing she knows is that Will truly loved her, and she holds this truth close to her when nothing else seems clear.

This book definitely kept my interest, but I was disappointed in a couple of things. One is that I am very interested in the independent school world in which Iris works, and while one of the students serves as a foil for Will's teenage years, I would have liked to have more of that world in the book. This is especially true since Iris' approach to helping her overly advantaged and insufficiently ethical students learn about responsibility and accountability is key to understanding the final resolution of her and Will's situation. The last few words of the book seemed far more black-and-white than the entire rest of the nuanced and suspenseful plot.

Traveling With T’s Thoughts:

Wowza, this book was so good. It was a curl up on the couch with Sir Thomas, have a big cup of hot chocolate and just read type of read.

I loved how Iris’s family really supported her and especially loved the relationship with her brother.

The mystery was great. There were layers and I loved peeling them back, making guesses and seeing where Kimberly was taking the readers.

What I liked:

The cover! It’s bold. It hints at so much.

The dilemma that Kimberly presents- how much do you really know about your spouse?

The ending. That is all I will say.



Bottom line: If this book is not on your TBR list, it should be.



*This book was sent to Traveling With T for review consideration. All thoughts and opinions are mine alone.*

**The Marriage Lie was a December #FuturisticFriday selection of Traveling With T.**



Happy Reading and Bookishly Yours,

T @ Traveling With T

Great thriller that kept me guessing until the end

I can not say enough good things about this book. It is so well written. I was hooked from the very first page until the last page. I absolutely did not want to put the book down. I really could not figure out how the book was going to end. AND WHAT A GREAT ENDING. A must read for anyone who loves suspenseful reading.

Oh my, this book. So many twists and turns, so many revelations big and small. While I expected a twist at the end, I did not see the one that we got. It took me completely by surprise. "The Marriage Lie" examines the question of just how well we ever actually know another person. It also brings up questions regarding secrets - what secrets we choose to keep and why, what would happen if we brought those secrets out in the open, is it ever right to keep secrets from someone, how will you react when your secrets are revealed? The book also looks at grief, what it is, how we react to it, and how it changes us. For book clubs, there's a section at the end that provides discussion questions, and there's a section where Belle talks about her inspiration and her writing process.

"The Marriage Lie" caught me from the first chapter, I was hooked. I had to keep reading, the story was compelling. It starts with a tender scene between Iris and her husband Will, then he leaves on a trip and Iris's world is ripped apart. She's dealing with grief and with the practicalities of a loved one's death all while trying to unravel why her husband was on the Seattle flight. As she digs, she begins to realize just how much she never knew about her husband and begins to question her culpability in that. Though she's a psychologist and seems to be a good one, like most of us, she has blind spots. She realizes that she willingly overlooked inconsistencies and questions about Will, swept them aside rather than look closer. As Iris learns more about Will and his actions, she has choices to make, including whether or not to keep certain things secret and if so, from whom. Who will she protect and why?

My one real gripe has to do with Iris's family; they seemed too perfect and understanding, or maybe that just says more about my family than the author's writing. Otherwise this story was practically perfect with compelling writing, a sympathetic heroine, and enough twists and turns to give you whiplash.