Happily Married by Victoria Jenkins

I hadn’t read any books by Victoria Jenkins previously but have just downloaded another after reading Happily Married. 

​I read most of it in thirty-five-degree heat on the balcony of a hotel in Pune, India, where I was recently visiting family. The location could not have been much further away than the small farm in north Wales where the book is set, but additional heat was provided by this psychological thriller. 

The story centres on childhood sweethearts Jake and Natalie who are now married and running a small farm that they inherited from her parents. The inheritance undoubtedly shifted the equilibrium point of their relationship and now, facing familiar financial difficulties, it is only with the hard work of childhood and family friend, Tyler, that they can keep things moving forward. They have a young daughter – Elsie – who is the centre of Natalie’s world, perhaps less so Jake’s. One of the questions posed is whether she is simply spoilt or enjoys extra attention due to her ‘learning difficulties.’

To try to improve things financially, but despite Jake’s opposition, they let out one of the farmhouse bedrooms to the attractive Kara. This brings a good deal of pressure to bear on their marriage and the story centres on how this and Jake’s suspiciously secret actions are resolved.

As a psychological thriller, the first part of the story played to my unconscious bias and kept me involved, even as I dreaded each new page revealing a little more of what I – we – knew was going to happen. However, that all changed about halfway through. I rushed into the hotel room to tell my wife and son about the most amazing and unexpected plot twist which I hadn’t seen coming at all. I was very excited about what was to come and where the story was now heading.

Unfortunately, I didn’t think the second half of the book held up nearly so well and, as shadows announced the coming of evening, I wished the darkness to come would be as thrilling as I had expected it to be. A rather lame backstory failed to convince me of its authenticity, and everything seemed drawn out towards an inevitable end. I had found Kara entirely credible, to begin with; by the end, she was, for me, entirely incredible.

There, I have used ‘unexpected’ and ‘inevitable’ within two paragraphs of each other. The author was clearly trying to build up the tension and the suspense, but it was as though, after revealing the plot twist, that it was too much for her to handle. Instead of the sense of jeopardy becoming almost unbearable, it quickly flattened out to become too cosy and predictable for me. Others may well beg to differ.

I think it would have been far better to draw us in for longer and then spring the twist on us, say two-thirds from the end. I felt the author had too much time to play with in the whole second half of the book and I became bored as a result.

However, I have downloaded another book by Victoria Jenkins because, although I felt the structure and parts of this plot were flawed, I found the writing beautiful throughout. It was also intelligent and completely fooled me for quite a long time, which had nothing to do with the heat!

---