Book Review: Husband, Missing by Polly Williams

"When you know, you know. This is what Gina told friends when she married Rex six months after meeting him. Passionately in love, Gina feels like the luckiest woman on the planet.

Until Rex vanishes without trace on holiday abroad. Her dream new marriage slipping into nightmare, Gina never wavers in her belief that he's alive. That she'll find him. When her frantic search unearths troubling secrets from Rex's past, Gina begins to question how well she really knows her beloved husband. But sometimes when all seems lost, unexpected, wonderful things are found..."

Rating: 4/5

You can buy Husband, Missing as a hardback or an eBook now.

I have to be honest and say I didn't enjoy this book as much as I had hoped to. Polly Williams' last novel was a fantastic read, very emotional and so well written, and I was hoping for more of the same from this book. For some reason though, I didn't connect with this book quite as much as her last one, and found myself not caring for Gina as much as I had expected to. She's a woman who has lost her husband without a trace, is struggling to get by without him in all senses of the word, and is relying on his brother Jake to help find him again. She seemed a bit too drippy for me, letting Rex virtually do everything for her and then ending up lost when he isn't around to do them. I'm quite an independent woman and would hate to be reliant on a man to the extent Gina relies on Rex, and I feel this maybe made me a bit frustrated towards Gina rather than sympathetic!

Rex doesn't actually appear in the book himself, but you feel like you get to know him through the many, many mentions of him that are made through the characters in the book, with the main one being Gina of course. She speaks very lovingly of her husband, refusing to believe the stories of him others are telling her, even though they have no reason to lie, and for this I also found myself getting a tad annoyed with her. Rex sounded like he was too good to be true, and it seems like this really is the case for him... I didn't like him from the word go to be honest! His brother Jake, on the other hand, was a lovely character and one I was warmed too very much, he has a kind heart and I liked his actions in the book. Rex's mother appears in the book also, but we don't get to know very much about her at all.

The idea of a missing husband was an interesting storyline, especially as we are as clueless as the main character and have no insider knowledge (as it were) of what had happened to him. Everything we find out about Rex, Gina finds out at the same time and I liked the way it developed. The pacing of the book is very good, it moves through a good period of time throughout the book without being too fast, yet it allowed for sufficient developments of the storylines and stopped the book being too stagnant. Also, it allowed a good change in Gina as well, without making her seem like she was forgetting about her husband, and moving on too quickly at all. I don't want to spoil too much of the book by talking about what happened, but the storylines around Gina add an extra emotion to the story, and I certainly very much felt for her and her situation.

I really enjoyed reading Husband, Missing and thought it was a well written and thought out book. Perhaps its an error on my part that I didn't feel that sorry for Gina or that I didn't warm to her all that much in the book, but it didn't hamper my enjoyment of the book overall or how much I liked the idea of the story. I liked that it wasn't overly obvious either, with no clear conclusion as I was reading, and it had me hooked as to what exactly had happened to Rex and why. I felt emotion along with the characters, I did feel hope when Gina was hoping so badly for her husband, and happiness and sorrow in the right parts too, so Williams has written well to evoke these emotions in her reader. I whizzed through the book quite quickly as I didn't find it to be a long read, and while it isn't Williams' best, it's certainly one to be picked up and enjoyed, and one readers of her previous novels will love too. A very good read.