Grace Reinhart Sachs is living the only life she ever wanted for herself. Devoted to her husband, a pediatric oncologist at a major cancer hospital, their young son Henry, and the patients she sees in her therapy practice, her days are full of familiar things: she lives in the very New York apartment in which she was raised, and sends Henry to the school she herself once attended. Dismayed by the ways in which women delude themselves, Grace is also the author of a book You Should Have Known, in which she cautions women to really hear what men are trying to tell them.
But weeks before the book is published a chasm opens in her own life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only an ongoing chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disaster, and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself.
My Review
YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN, by Jean Hanff Koreltz, involves a relationship and marriage therapist, Grace. Grace is on the verge of being published, a novel, “You Should Have Known”, offering advice to women, urging them not to ignore the signs regarding men they are with or plan on spending their lives with. Grace is unlikable, a snob, and thinks she is much better than her current patients.
Her husband, Jonathan is rather supportive with a thriving pediatric oncologist practice, with seventeen years of marriage, and has a twelve year old son, Henry which is bright, attending a prestigious private school. Sounds like a perfect life, right? Living in a New York apartment where Grace grew up, their lives are content and balanced until a tragedy occurs, which changes everything.
Then there's a death--a woman we really don't know, or have any idea how she is connected to this family. In addition, Jonathan, Grace's husband disappears. With officer's knocking at the door, Grace finally takes a hard, long look in the mirror and sees she knows nothing, or what she should have known.
Jonathan is supposedly away at a conference in Cleveland...or is he? Does he have a connection to the murdered woman? When was the last time Grace has spoken to Jonathan?
Karma comes around to haunt Grace, questioning the perfection of her happy marriage, stunning home, (city and country homes), career, great kid, and perfect life—the scandal which can tear apart this illusion of a life.
One woman’s examination of her life, memories, shame, fear, humiliation and horror of admitting her failures. As she tries to uncover the truth of her husband, the friends are now gone as she is left to find answers to her life of ruin and disaster—can she rise above the wreckage and reinvent herself?
A good set up; however, would have preferred more of a suspense, versus all the fluff of what it is to live in a pretentious and perfect world. Will have to concur with a number of the other reviewers ----could have been a great novel; however, all the background information, took priority over the part which should, or could have been an excellent psychological thriller—A little of a disconnect.
