A review by marilynw
Take Your Breath Away by Linwood Barclay

4.0

Take Your Breath Away by Linwood Barclay

Poor Andrew Mason goes to his lakeside cabin and comes home to find his wife, Brie, missing. Not only does he lose his wife, he's suspected of murdering her. Andrew sinks into a drunken depression but eventually pulls himself out with the help of his best friend and business partner, Greg. Now, six years later, with his last name changed to avoid attention, Andrew lives with a woman he loves, runs his own modest business, and has mostly put the past behind him. And then his wife is seen. The wife who disappeared for six years.

This is one of those stories where I think the audiobook narrators add to the story. There are at least eight of them and the narration is so well done. I was hooked to this story right away and I really wanted to believe Andrew. He doesn't even pretend to be perfect. He made mistakes in the past, he did things that were wrong in the past, he might even not walk a straight line in the future but he's trying to be a good man. Brie's family mostly hates him, thanks to Brie's sister Izzy's campaign to have him convicted of murder. But despite Detective Marissa Hardy trying to get to the goods on Andrew, she could never find anything to stick.

Now Hardy is on his tail again, probably was never really off of it. Andrew has to figure out who this person is, why she would be doing what she is doing, and if it really is Brie, why she was gone for six years. Andrew has made a life with Jayne now and as much as he would like Brie to still be alive, Brie being alive will explode his new life to bits. There is so much going on in this story that it had my head spinning. I sort of, kind of thought I might know what was going on and then a monkey wrench would get thrown into the mix and send me reeling and scrambling to figure things out again. This is just my second Barclay novel and now I need to get my hands more more.

Pub May 17, 2022