Many thanks to Raven Street Publishing and Netgalley for introducing me to Robert Bryndza. This thriller was just that, and kept my rapt attention most of the time.
Maggie and Will are middle-aged professionals living the affluent life of their dreams: Maggie is a trauma surgeon, and Will has left medicine to pursue architecture, his passion. The author quickly paints a picture of a happy life together, until Will is carried into the trauma unit where his wife Maggie is working, dying of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. Maggie has a very hard time accepting the idea that Will has killed himself. She saw no signs of depression, no sign of anything amiss.
In the following days and weeks, as Maggie tries to come to grips with her new life, she travels to the vacation home they built on an island in Croatia. This is when things get scary and creepy. Once there, Maggie will discover more about a part of Will’s life he never shared with her, while alive. However, it turns out that he has made arrangements to tell her everything, should something happen to him. Without giving away too much of the story, I must say that this part of the story was hard for me to fathom, that Will would dump all of this on his poor, unsuspecting wife, a woman he was very much in love with.
The author’s depiction of Maggie’s experiences on this island in Croatia, during the quiet, deserted off-season, is vivid and memorable, and her angst feels real.This part of the novel was extremely well written.
However, Will’s willingness to get himself into such trouble, to compromise himself in such a way, does raise some questions about Will’s morals and life that I don’t feel were answered in a very believable way. Maggie, meanwhile, is an incredibly strong character, and very smart. Through sheer toughness and a little luck, she reinvents her life–perhaps a little too tidily. All in all, this story was compelling, if not always believable. I would happily read this author’s work again.
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