REVIEW: "The New Husband" by D.J. Palmer
I’ve been married for 14 years (in May) and, overall, I really like it.
My enjoyment of marriage is undoubtedly due, in no small part, to the fact that my husband cooks and cleans and parents and maintains the house like a motherfucking HGTV junkie.
But despite the fact that I think it’s preferable to go through life coupled, I definitely do not think I would seek to get married again were my own marriage to end.
Honestly, even contemplating the process of finding someone new is so fucking exhausting.
Like, first you have to meet them — which would be hard for me, as I don’t really do things that involve pants and being sober and leaving the house.
Then you have to do all sorts of shit, including but not limited to:
Figuring out if they like you back.
Letting a whole new human see you naked.
Deciding if their annoying habits are ones you can tolerate.
Pacing the relationship just right so you seem neither disinterested nor overly attached
Determining whether or not they are, in fact, a psycho — Yes, I’m looking at you all of you randos who try to slide into my DMs on Words with Friends. I’m here to play poorman’s Scrabble, not become a cast member on 90*fucking*Day Fiance
While all of the steps to finding a future partner are important, the last one is arguably the most critical.
As I’ve mentioned many times, I’ve seen enough episodes of Dateline to know that some guys be cray.
And if Dateline hadn’t adequately taught me this lesson, The New Husband, DJ Palmer’s newest novel, certainly would have done the trick.
Though Nina still loved her husband, Glen, their decade and a half long marriage certainly lacked the sizzle it had in the early days.
Now, mired in routine, they moved through life in a lurch. Nina took care of the children. Glen went to work weekdays and on the weekends, he took their dog, Daisy, and went fishing.
And it was on one of these regularly scheduled fishing excursions that a mysterious disaster struck.
In the wee hours of the morning, Glen’s boat was found, empty except for their obviously disoriented pup. Upon closer inspection, it was discovered that the deck of the boat was coated in a thick layer of blood. Enough blood to strongly suggest that, though there was no body, Glen had died — either by accident or intention — on the vessel.
Losing your husband unexpectedly is enough to send anyone on an emotional tangent. But Nina’s grief is amplified when she finds that, before his disappearance and likely death, Glen was carrying on an affair with another woman.
The discovery of this deception induces her to dig deeper into Glen’s comings and goings. And, when she does, she finds that he had also been lying about his job. Though he leaving every morning under the guise of heading off to work, he had actually been fired several months prior to his disappearance.
Left with little money to support herself and her two children, Nina considers leaving behind the life she has built and moving across the country to live with her parents — a solution that she doesn’t favor.
Almost serendipitously, though, she finds an alternative option.
Basically out of nowhere, Simon, a teacher with whom she had previously worked when establishing a new program at her children’s school, pops back into her life. Though Nina never had any inklings that Simon wanted to be more than just friends during the short duration of their previous acquaintance, now it seems pretty clear that he has a romantic interest in her.
Things with Simon progress so beautifully, so organically, that — against her better judgment, but feeling like she has no other options — she agrees to move in with him.
Though Nina feels happy and supported in this new relationship, her teenage daughter, Maggie, is far from content with the arrangement. Maggie doesn’t like Simon and, perhaps more importantly, she doesn’t trust him.
She is certain that Simon’s motives are in some way nefarious and she’s willing to stop at nothing to make her mother see the truth, too.
So, here’s the thing with this novel.
I really, deeply, completely did not like it.
When I picked it up, I was hot off a string of 4- and 5-cocktail reads — which was wonderful because it was really making my COVID-19 quarantine go by faster.
And then I picked up this book.
Typically I start all reviews by the strengths of the book. But, in this case — and it really pains me to say this — I found none.
This read got off to a rocky start when the author broke one of the cardinal rules of writing: show, don’t tell.
*For those unfamiliar with this rule, here is a little more info.
In this novel, the author did a lot of telling. He tried to make this seem natural, reasonable, even, by having our protagonist start seeing a psychologist. But, really, this just ended up being a mechanism for a whole shit ton of telling.
In writing these scenes in which Nina spills her soul to her therapist, Palmer subjected his readers to chapter after chapter after chapter of this character telling her shrink everything that had ever gone wrong in her life — feeding us a boring diatribe of backstory that felt forced and inauthentic and inorganic.
I was hopeful that, once all of the backstory was established, the book would improve.
But, it didn’t.
As I progressed, a new issue presented itself: a lack of character development.
At the end of the day, I gave zero shits about these characters. There was not even one character in whom I became invested.
And the reason I failed to become invested is that the author failed to develop his characters.
None of the characters felt real.
None of their actions seemed authentic.
Even their speech seemed forced.
Topping off my catalog of grievances, there were multiple moments in this novel where events seemed improbable to the point of being absurd.
*Spoiler Alert*
First, we learn that the presumed dead father had a “playful” nickname for his daughter, Maggie. Because Maggie was severely allergic to peanuts, he would call her “Tracy Nuts”.
Don’t get it?
Yeah, neither did I.
Apparently, it’s funny because a “trace of nuts” could kill her.
I mean… what?
Seriously?
Never have I known anyone, let alone a parent, to turn something as potentially serious as an anaphylactic-shock-inducing nut allergy into an opportunity to do a little tongue and cheek wordplay — and, normally, I fucking love puns.
And, if that wasn’t enough, further into the book, Nina’s therapist — yes, the one to whom she did all of that telling — is attacked.
Nina finds out about the attack when a representative from the therapist’s office calls Nina to inform her first that the doctor was attacked and next, that they aren’t sure that the therapist will survive.
Come on.
There is no way that her therapist's office would be calling patients individually to both inform them not only that there was an attack but also that the therapist is basically a fucking goner.
I understand that sharing this shocking tidbit added some drama, but it simply would not have gone down like that.
*End Spoilers*
As I neared the end of this novel — honestly, breathing a sigh of relief that it was finally over — I still sat on the fence in regards to the rating.
Sure, I didn’t love it, but maybe there was something here others would like? Maybe it’s a 3-cocktail read?
But then, the epilogue happened.
And it was the nail in the coffin.
*Spoiler Alert, Again*
The epilogue consisted of a chunk of text that’s supposed to be Maggie’s college admissions essay. Basically, some profound recap of the lessons learned. But, as written, it sounds like the work of a second grader.
Choppy and short and eye-rollingly cliche.
So I was left disappointed, again — just as I had come to expect from this novel.
*End Spoilers*
I really was hoping that somehow the epilogue would provide some depth to a completely shallow novel.
But it absolutely did not.
All it did was reaffirm everything I had come to believe about this disappointing read.
Much to my chagrin, this book was exceedingly putdownable and frustratingly weak by almost every measure.
It earns an atypically meager 2 out of 5 cocktails.
I really hate being disappointed by a book. So I need a rebound. What’s the best book you’ve read this year? Tell me about it in the comments, below.
Hoping my next read is more...satisfying. Want to see what I select? Subscribe to updates in the sidebar on the right and follow me on Goodreads.
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