Katie Gutierrez - More Than You'll Ever Know
5 ⭐
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Crime, Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 352
Format: Paperback Proof
Publisher: Penguin Michael Joseph
Date Published: 7th July 2022
Huge Thank You to Penguin Michael Joseph Publishing for a proof copy and for inviting me to be a part of the blog tour.
Book Blurb:
Lore Rivera was married to two men at once, until on a baking hot day in 1986, one of them found out and shot the other. A secret double life, a tragic murder. That's the story the world knows.
It's not the story that fascinates Cassie Bowman.
Carrying the weight of her own family tragedy, true-crime writer Cassie wants to know more about the mysterious woman at the heart of it all, Lore. How did one woman fall in love with two different men? How did she balance the love and the lies?
To her surprise, Cassie finds that Lore is willing to talk. To finally tell her heartbreaking story - about how dance became an affair; how marriage became a murder.
As the two women grow closer, Cassie finds she can't help but confess her own darkest secrets. But when she slowly starts to realise that there might be more to the night of the murder than anyone has realised, can either woman face up to the thing they've been hiding from the truth?
My Review:
This book! I loved it. It gripped
me from the very beginning and kept me wondering what is going on and what was
going to happen until the very end. The writing was also brilliant! It was so
authentic, easy to read and gave each character their personality and voice. I
loved the inclusion of Spanish words and phrases as that displays the reality
of Mexican-American families living close to the US border with Mexico back in the
1980s and even now.
The story is divided into two timelines.
Timeline one is set in the 1980s and follows Lore Rivera. She is married to
Fabian and has two twin sons, Mateo and Gabriel. She married Fabian when she
was very young and family is now everything to her. However, she feels lost and
doesn’t remember a time when she did something for herself. Her current life is routine… Work, twins and Fabian. So, one day on her work trip to Mexico City she
meets a charming Andres Ruso. Straight away she connects with him. He seems to
like Lore, too. However, Lore didn’t mention to Andres that she has a husband
and a family. As their relationship blossom, lies start becoming more complicated
and Lore ends up having two completely separate lives in different countries. That’s
until Andres suddenly ends up in Loredo, where Lore, Fabian and the kids live.
The same night he ends up killed by Fabian. At least that is the story that
everyone knew for the past 30 years…
The second timeline follows a
crime blogger and writer Cassie, who accidentally stumbles across an article
about Fabian killing Andres and a woman who managed to have two husbands and lives
in two different countries. She is immediately attracted to the story and does
everything to find Lore and make her talk about what happened to Andres. Cassie
wants to write a book that would feature Lore’s true story…but the truth is harder
to uncover than Cassie previously thought….Both Cassie and Lore have secrets
that they don’t want anyone to know but for both of them in order to move
forward, they need to face each other and their pasts.
I liked the backstories of both
Cassie and Lore, especially Lore’s backstory as it would explain why she acted
the way she did and had an affair with Fabian with Andres. It also helps to
understand some of Lore’s actions. I did think that some of Cassie’s backstory
could’ve been explained in more detail but other than that it gives enough
information to understand Cassie as a character. Both, Cassie and Lore, and
even other characters in the book are human, they make mistakes, they lose the
ones their love, their struggle and love…and how characters were developed and
presented throughout the book just adds to that. It did make me go through a
lot of emotions because I felt for the characters, I agreed and disagreed with
them, I laughed and loved with them…and that’s thanks to the brilliant writing!
The twists! It is a quite slow-burn
family drama but there were quite a few brilliant twists throughout the story
and I enjoyed that! It made me want to read the book in one sitting. Also,
these twists mixed with American and Mexican history in the 1980s, such as
recession, economic crisis, people’s struggles and extreme events made the story
more real. It felt like I am reading a real story rather than a piece of
fiction.
Overall: I loved this book! It is
one of the books I will be recommending to people! I was so surprised by the
ending of the book and I thoroughly enjoyed the character exploration in this
book, as well as the love story/ affair of Lore and Andres. I did think that
the ending was a bit abrupt as it would have been interesting to learn more
about what happened to both Cassie and Lore following the book release and how
their lives changed. However, brilliant debut, with amazing writing, great characters
and just a very gripping read.
About the Author:
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