A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolirck

Ralph Truitt places an add in a Chicago newspaper looking for a wife to keep him company in the harsh Wisconsin winters.  Truitt, a very wealthy man at the turn of the century, has many deep, dark secrets which are the reasons for his loneliness.  Cathrine Land, who answers his add, has many secrets of her own.  Her largest secret is that she is solely after Truitt to murder him and leave herself a wealthy widow. Throughout the first harsh winter of the relationship, Truitt and Land's secrets start to come out.       

A Reliable Wife  is marketed as a "psychological thriller".  I can't see the thriller aspect in the novel, but I did see a psychological love story unfold in a very unconventional way.  I know what you are thinking, "What is a psychological love story?"  Well, I would describe it was a love story that has many different sides to it.  It has secrets, and both good and bad times.  It plays with the minds of the characters so that they do not know which way to feel throughout the story.  It is a love story that keeps everyone guessing until the end.  

The novel opens to a mystery that the reader already knows the answer too.  But as the novel unfolds, the reader learns new bits and pieces of the mystery.  Some of them you can guess and some of them you cannot.  These pieces create an intricate layering of story aspects that develop the final conclusion.  To me this is my favorite kind of mystery to read.  I want to keep reading until the characters figure out what I already know.  It allows the reader to come to their own conclusions about what the characters final reactions will be.    

And these characters have such deep personalities that you never know which way they will turn.  The story's narration is told in an omniscient point of view, so the reader never knows that the characters are actually thinking.  Only after they have made their decision and acted upon it, does the reader find out about the character's ACTUAL motives.  Throughout this story, the characters grow and change.  Some of them change so drastically that the reader is shocked by their actions in good and bad ways. 

This novel really surprised me.  I was shocked to see the love story unfold.  It was not the normal mushy love story that makes you cry and hope your husband brings home roses.  It was a real love story.  A love story with ups and downs.  Happy times and bad.   I would recommend this book to anyone.  But when you begin, keep an open mind because this book will surprise you to the very last page.