What happens when you’re really, truly done making your marriage work? You can’t be married to someone without sometimes wanting to bash them over the head…As Long As We Both Shall Live is JoAnn Chaney’s wicked, masterful examination of a marriage gone very wrong, a marriage with lots of secrets…“My wife I think she’s dead ” Matt frantically tells park rangers that he and his wife, Marie, … rangers that he and his wife, Marie, were hiking when she fell off a cliff into the raging river below. They start a search, but they aren’t hopeful: no one could have survived that fall. It was a tragic accident.
But Matt’s first wife also died in suspicious circumstances. And when the police pull a body out of the river, they have a lot more questions for Matt.
Detectives Loren and Spengler want to know if Matt is a grieving, twice-unlucky husband or a cold-blooded murderer. They dig into the couple’s lives to see what they can unearth. And they find that love’s got teeth, it’s got claws, and once it hitches you to a person, it’s tough to rip yourself free.
So what happens when you’re done making it work?
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It has been said that love and hate are equally intense and that transitioning from one to the other is easier than one would think. In Joann Chaney’s As Long as We Both Shall Live, a couple remain fused together in a tangle of passionate antagonism and attraction. Matt and Janice are only married about a year when Janice suspects that Matt is having an affair. As the novel opens, she is about to confront the lovers, unsure which of the two should receive the brunt of her rage. Tragically the night ends in death, but Chaney leaves the details a mystery. The author instead flashes forward twenty-three years later as Matt and a second wife, Marie, are on a hiking getaway attempting to reset a relationship that has gone seriously awry. This time, one of the pair winds up missing- could this be an unfortunate coincidence? Investigators Spengler and Loren are suspicious about the two circumstances connected to Matt and they begrudgingly work together to dissect layers of secrets forged over many years. As they pursue the case, one of these officers is also being hunted by a former colleague who is convinced that he/she killed a former partner. Full of unexpected twists and relentlessly vicious repartee between characters, As Long as We Both Shall Live is an exciting novel that will keep Chaney fans riveted and guessing right up to its last sentence.
Amazingly entertaining and I couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next. A definite must read.
When I read the blurb for this one, I expected a gripping psychological/domestic thriller. In fact, that’s what I was hoping for, and the opening lines and first handful of chapters set the stage for exactly that. The book does deliver in the domestic thriller genre in part. There are some terrific twists in Matt and Marie’s story, but it felt like this one couldn’t decide what it wanted to be. From the time our detectives are introduced, it becomes more procedural than thriller, and there’s nothing wrong with that except a large chunk of the book is weighed down by Loren’s backstory. His history is interesting enough, but it felt out of place, almost like two separate books thrown in a bowl and mixed together. With the bouncing back and forth, what had the potential to be the gripping thriller I was hoping for lost its edge. Tightened up and trimmed down, As Long as We Both Shall Live has everything needed for a great thriller. As it stands, it was just an okay read for me.
This was my first read by Author JoAnn Chaney and I enjoyed it. Matt seems to subscribe to the theory that if you tire of a wife, you should murder them instead of divorcing them. He feels that if you have a plan, you will get away with it. His first wife, Janice, dies under suspicious circumstances and then twenty plus years later, his wife Marie goes over a cliff. Sadly, this well publicized scenario has played out numerous times in real life. Some of the twists and turns were predictable but overall this is a very good read.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review. My honest review says you need to put this book on your To Read shelf!
After reading the marketing blurb, I had it in my mind that this was a tale based loosely on some story I heard somewhere (48 Hours, maybe?) about a husband whose first wife fell off a cliff. Getting rid of Wife No. 1 worked so well, he tried the same thing on Wife No. 2. Well, this story isn’t that story.
Matt’s first wife dies in a tragic accident, then 20 years later Wife No. 2 falls off a cliff. But did she really? hat the question and, oh, there are so many twists to this plot that I can’t do it justice in a review without giving any of it away. While I was reading, I thought there was a typo, and I’m like, no, that’s not right. Keep reading, and you suddenly realize it’s right, and the twist will make your head spin.
This is the tale of a marriage gone horribly wrong, with secrets and manipulation aplenty, a plot that twists every which way. The great helps you keep it all straight. here are some dark moments, then there are others that actually make you laugh. There is also a sub-story, not part of the plot, that works along the same theme but approached from a different manner.
Perfectly thrilling page-turner!
OMG. Twist after twist. If you want a novel that will keep you guessing and that you cannot put down, read this. P.S. I also live in Colorado and love Estes Park
This reminded me of Gone Girl, a real page turner that met me guessing till the end.
clever, clever!
It’s very intriguing and interesting
I have been reading a lot of psychological thrillers/mysteries and I have been getting burnt out on them. So I went into reading As Long as We Both Shall Live not wanting to read it. I am glad that I made myself read this book. It was fantastic.
There are four plotlines in As Long as We Both Shall Live. Yes, 4. When I realized that, I did an internal groan. Anything over two plotlines and I get confused. In As Long as We Both Shall Live, the author was able to keep the plotlines separate. She was also to merge the plotlines when needed. There was a little lag in the middle of the book when two of the plotlines joined. Other than that, this book zipped right along.
I loved how snarky this book was. There were points where I was dying laughing with the views on marriage. I am not married but have been in a relationship for 15 years, and I get it. That’s what made parts of this book funny to me.
Detective Loren is one of my new favorite fictional characters. I will admit, I wasn’t too sure about him when he was introduced. He was abrasive and rude to everyone. But slowly (and yes, slowly) a different side of him was shown. By the end of the book, I loved him.
The mystery angle of the book was good. The author did a great job of keeping me in the dark about what exactly happened the day Marie disappeared. She slowly let out clues about what happened. There are also so many red herrings. That is what made it enjoyable to read!!
I loved how the author brought everything together at the end of the book. The twists were what made the ending for me. I had guessed about one of them early in the book. But the other one, oh no. That took me 100% by surprise.
A clever, well-written addition to the “dysfunctional marriage” suspense genre. Chaney expertly shifts between the perspective of a husband, the wife he may have killed, and the female detective trying to track down the truth. Every time one part of the puzzle is solved, new complications arise, making this one of those book I raced through in a few days.
Yes, yes, yes! i loved it. There is a lot of he said/she said and the everlasting question of who did it? Or more like who did what? And why? It’s said that you only can hate someone if you loved the person at one time and this story proves just that. Even after everything happening all those years ago, there is so much love/hate that it’s impossible to move on. I’m going to recommend this book to everyone I know, so I can discuss the ending and who the real villain was in that story.
OMG this was a powerful book! I listened to this on audiobook and the narrator, Christina Delaine, delivers a relentlessly intense reading which added to the potency of this layered domestic thriller. This story was so full on I had to take breaks every so often. But I kept being drawn back by the complexity of the characters and the layered revelations that kept me guessing almost all the way through.
If not for a recommendation on Goodreads I don’t think I would have given this book much of a chance. Matt is throughly unlikeable and it’s pretty obvious the marriage was as rocky as the cliff face from which Marie falls. But, oh gosh, there is so much more to the story than that. Loren and Spengler are great too. There is a subplot that concerns Loren that adds yet another layer to the twists.
If you like twists and layers and having your expectations played with this is definitely one to add to your TBR. Highly recommended.
What a page-turner! JoAnn Chaney is a fantastic storyteller who draws incredibly rich characters, including the secondary cast. Such as: badass Det. Marion Spengler (LOVED HER) and her quasi-partner for this case, raunchy Ralph Loren. A man with a potty mouth and a good heart.
As Long as We Both Shall Live harkened me back to the film War of the Roses whose crazy couple was tame in comparison to the sociopathic couple in this story and their bloody matrimonial battlefield. As much as I hated both of the Evanses, I loved reading each of their perspectives regarding their more than two decade marriage. During those times, I’d find myself thinking: Yeah, she/he has a point. I get why she/he feels that way. BUT, they’re both still whackos!
So. Well. Done.
I highly recommend this unputdownable tour de force.
Tore through this. Fantastic entry in the domestic suspense genre, which I’m a sucker for.