by Morag Joss
First published 2008
A doctor's wife discovers her husband's affair on a windy April afternoon. Minutes later, she drives down a country road, distracted and blinded by sun. She strikes Ruth Mitchell, a sixty-one-year-old woman on a bicycle, killing her instantly. The wife flees the scene. Police never identify the driver. The killer begins to fall apart from guilt while Ruth's husband Arthur staggers through sleepless nights, destroyed by grief. The woman starts watching Arthur through his windows. She sees his unwashed clothes and messy house. Eventually she enters his home in secret, then more openly. Arthur, broken by loss, believes his dead wife has somehow returned to him. The killer and the widower become entangled in a relationship built on her enormous lie. This story follows her path from darkness toward revelation as both characters struggle with devastating loss.
Genres: fiction, drama, mystery, crime, contemporary, psychological-thriller
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Country Road
Period: April
370 pages · Kindle Edition · Delacorte Press
Content warnings: death