The Husbands

I received a digital advance copy of The Husbands by Chandler Baker through NetGalley. The Husbands is scheduled for release on August 3, 2021.

The Husbands is the story of a woman (Nora) attempting to have it all. She is married to a man she loves, has a beautiful young daughter, is pregnant with their second child, and is up for partner at her law firm. While she loves every aspect of her life, she is struggling to balance it all, and honestly wouldn’t mind if her husband pitched in a bit more.

Nora is contacted to represent a resident of the community Nora and her husband are considering moving into. Nora is asked to do her best to get large financial settlement to support a woman whose husband burned to death in a house fire. As she is both investigating the events in the house and getting to know the community around the house, Nora realizes the idyllic neighborhood may hold more secrets than she initially expected.

Chandler Baker is a writer who has very clear statements in each of her novels. In The Husbands, Baker is addressing the division of labor in households when both adults work outside the home. In the world Baker has imagined here, we have a sort of inverted Stepford Wives situation, with husbands who willingly go out of their way to make life easier for the wives they know work so hard. While books that are out to make a statement can struggle to balance statement and story, Baker nailed it with this one. The mystery surrounding the house fire and dead man is both related to Baker’s central statement and makes the story more than just the statement.

The only piece that felt heavy-handed to me in terms of statement were the media bits inserted between some chapters. These were mainly imagined responses to online blog posts or online articles. These inserts were not directly related to the story (though they were all about the topic of balance between the contributions of husbands and wives) and did not bring any new perspectives or information to the story. In my opinion, these could have been cut from the novel.

I also found the ending of the book to be a bit clunky. Baker has followed the structure that seems to be more and more popular in thrillers to have the book end immediately after the climax. With no true denouement, authors are forced to tuck all the information a reader needs to resolve the story into the climax itself. In The Husbands, this resulted in an ending that felt rushed. Some elements of the climax were unclear to me, while other elements seemed predictable or a little too pat. Baker did add an epilogue, but this epilogue was not part of the resolution of the story, but a true look ahead. (This epilogue also contained what I considered to be the best twist of the book, as well.)

Overall, The Husbands is a thriller that does more than solve a suspenseful mystery. This is one that gives readers a point of reference as we contemplate how to make progress as a society. Baker does not give us an answer to the questions she raises, only gives us a solution that most would consider to have gone too far.