Till Death Do Us Part
I stayed up past my absurdly early bedtime to finish Till Death Do Us Part–it’s a page turner that you HAVE TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED and I couldn’t put it down until I did. However, once I did turn that last page, I glared at the clock. I’d stayed up for this ending? I’m all for sleight of hand but this book keeps too many secrets too long and concludes improbably. Was it a fun read? Yes. Did it irk me? You bet.
It began well. June, now 38, has a wonderful life. She has a natural wine bar that survived despite opening right before COVID, an adoring, successful fiancé, a loving family, and is contemplating getting a pet. But, ten years ago, she was utterly wrecked by the death of her husband of one week. Though she’d only dated Josh for a few months, she adored him. Seven days into their union, he went out to pick up breakfast and never returned. The police believe he drowned in the San Francisco Bay although his body was never found. For a very long time after his death, June was sure he was still alive or, if he wasn’t, he’d been the victim of foul play. But, slowly, she made her piece with his passing, fell in love with Kyle, and moved on.
Then, while in Prospect Park taking engagement photos, she sees him. She is sure of it. The next day, she sees him again, standing outside her store. He runs off and she loses him but she KNOWS it was Josh which means, of course, if he’s not dead, what the hell has been going on for the past ten years.
She begins to search for him on the net. Josh grew up on a vineyard in Napa so she begins there. And, yes! She sees a photo of him on a winery’s website, a photo of him and his wife. A plane ticket and several lies to Kyle and her friends, and she’s off, headed to the West Coast, determined to find out THE TRUTH.
June, however, is not our only narrator. We also learn the story of Josh’s mom, Bev, beginning in Josh’s junior year in high school. As Bev tells her tale, slowly spooling out information about Josh in the past, we also are privy to her own issues a good part of which involve her love for someone not her husband. How this fits in the narrative is unclear for much of the book and I confess I found it distracting. Bev loves her children but she’s deeply ambivalent about motherhood and her take on Josh is unsettling. Is Josh evil? Misunderstood? You’ll want to know–as I said, I couldn’t put Till Death Do Us Part down.
The book veers back and forth in time. As June, in Napa, tries to figure out what the hell is going on with Josh, and as Bev narrates what happened that long ago summer, my expectations for something believably shocking grew. At the book’s 50% mark, however, a bombshell is dropped that irritated me to no end. I was pissed. It’s a piece of information that changes everything that’s come before. I felt manipulated.
But, I STILL wanted to know what happened to Josh, so I kept flipping the pages–it’s a stressful read in the way that a good thriller can be. But then, another secret is revealed that, again, made me feel jerked around. And by the time I got to the final pages wherein Josh’s fate was revealed, I was shocked and not in a good way. WTF endings rarely work for me and this one did not.
Why then you ask, is this book not a C or D read? Well, the writing is very good, the deep dive into how wine is made is fascinating, and, as I said, I couldn’t put the book down. Till Death Do Us Part is like a very strong, tasty cocktail that, in the morning, when your head hurts and you don’t want to get out of bed, you don’t regret having–FUN! DIVERSION–but you don’t feel good about.
So, if you like twisty mysteries, you’ll enjoy this. It requires far too much suspension of disbelief, and it doesn’t play fair, but, hey, you can’t have everything.