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. Grace is also the author of the forthcoming You Should Have Known, a book in which she castigates women for not valuing their intuition and calls upon them to pay attention to … attention to their first impressions of men.
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 a 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. Includes Reading Group Guidemore
A slow-burn, character-driven thriller that takes a fresh look at infidelity.
My favorite novels are those that get deep inside a character’s head, with lots of interior dialog, and I loved this one.
Grace, the main character is a savvy educated woman who is left wondering how the heck she walked herself into a scenario where there’s a murder at the preppy Manhattan school her son attends, and her husband is missing.
Add in the irony that Grace is a psychologist who wrote a book called “You Should Have Known” where she warns other women about the early relationship signs they should have listened to, and why we deny what our intuition is telling us about the men in our lives. I particularly appreciated this angle, and the insights it brought.
Understandably, when she finds out her husband is missing, Grace is racked with doubt – not only about her marriage but the entire premise of the value she brings to the world. A juicy internal conflict that I thoroughly enjoyed watching play out as she’s hit with revelation after revelation.
Interestingly, I watched the television show first, but for me, this novel was a clear example of where the book far exceeds the on-screen version, because of the ability to get inside the main character’s head.
Suspenseful, clever, and ironic. A fast read that left me wanting to read the author’s other work.
Unbelievable unexpected twists and turns. Difficult to put it down. Brilliantly written with richly developed characters.
Fantastic book with so many twists and turns. Whenever I thought that I had figured it out, I had doubts a few pages later. I couldn’t wait to read more at the end of my day. I liked the characters and the whole atmosphere of the story. Definitely recommended!
It’s so much better than the HBO rendition!
If you’ve seen the Netflix movie, The Undoing, starring Hugh Grant and Nicole based on this interesting novel, you’ve seen a portrayal of quite a different story. Yes, both are about a Manhattan psychotherapist/author of a soon-to-be-published marital self-help book whose husband is a charming pediatric oncologist. The couple has an adorable, pre-teen son who attends an elite Manhattan private school and plays the violin. David E. Kelly took these bones and created a sensational legal drama with a great deal of eye candy illustrating posh lives. Jean Hanff Korelitz has crafted a psychological drama that digs deep into a woman’s soul. I admire both and found it fascinating to see how a top Hollywood producer/writer tweaked the book to make it TV-ish.
There are many things to like about this book, and possibly even more things to dislike. I’m giving it three stars because overall it does deliver in the page-turning department, but it takes a circuitous route to get there, and frankly could have easily been half the length; I can’t count the number of pages of mind-numbing detail I skipped.
Grace Reinhart is living the perfect life with a rich, famous doctor for a husband, a bright and talented 12-year-old son, and a satisfying professional career as a therapist. A book deal has just been signed for a book titled—what else?—*You Should Have Known*, detailing how women often miss or ignore red flags early in their relationships. (There’s no consideration given to how this might work for men as well, even though she does couples therapy, and she takes a disturbingly superior attitude toward her patients.)
Her husband leaves for a conference, but very quickly Grace finds he has decamped altogether—and has probably in addition murdered his current mistress. Grace and her son must flee New York and put their lives back together in a remote town, even as she uncovers the layers upon layers of deceit he wove around her. While Korelitz handles suspense deftly, it’s suspense that doesn’t really go anywhere. She’s covering ground that has already been skillfully examined in a number of different novels and films (the “my husband had a double life” trope) and has no troubles delivering clichés (the new love interest is available and wholesome and lives next door).
It’s a good book for a rainy afternoon.