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My Other Husband by Dorothy Koomson Review: A Much Darker Book Than It Sounds
If you’ve seen this book described as a story about two women bonding over grief for the same dead husband — that’s not this book. I want to be direct about that upfront, because that’s a genuinely different novel than the one Dorothy Koomson actually wrote.
What This Book Is Actually About
Cleo Forsum Pryce has, by outward appearance, made it: she’s a bestselling novelist whose crime series, The Baking Detective, has been turned into a hit TV show. Then, with no clear explanation given to the people around her, she starts dismantling her own life — filing for divorce from Wallace, a husband she’s still visibly in love with, and walking away from her scriptwriting career. As she drafts the final episodes of her show, people connected to her start dying — in exactly the ways her own fictional detective solves murders in the series. She’s the obvious suspect, and she can’t clear her name, because doing so means confessing to something from her past: a relationship with a man named Heath, back when she was at university in 1996. He’s the “other husband” the title refers to — not a second marriage discovered after death, but a buried, complicated history Cleo has spent years keeping hidden.
The book runs two timelines side by side — Cleo’s unraveling present, and the 1996 relationship that’s coming back to catch up with her — and it’s set mostly in Brighton, Koomson’s home city and a recurring setting across her books.
Why the Reveal Timing Matters Here
This is Koomson’s 18th novel, and reviewers who’ve read her full catalog consistently point to this one’s reveal structure as a highlight — the big turn doesn’t happen at the very end, but roughly at the midpoint, which changes how the second half of the book functions. You’re not just waiting to find out what happened; you’re re-reading everything that came before through new information, which is a harder trick to pull off than a single ending twist.
One detail worth knowing if you’re squeamish about content warnings: this is a genuinely darker, more suspense-driven book than Koomson’s gentler “women’s fiction” reputation might suggest to a new reader — it deals with obsession, toxic relationships, and real violence, not just emotional drama.
Where It’s Honestly Uneven
Real reader reviews are fairly consistent on one point: the pacing sags somewhat in the middle section before the midpoint reveal picks things back up. If you’re used to Koomson’s faster-moving thrillers, expect a slower build here before the payoff.
Who Should Actually Read This
- Fans of psychological thrillers with dual timelines and mid-book, not just end-book, reveals.
- Readers who enjoy morally complicated protagonists — Cleo isn’t purely sympathetic, and the book doesn’t ask you to fully forgive her, just to understand her.
- Existing Koomson readers who’ve enjoyed her Brighton-set books like The Brighton Mermaid.
Who Should Skip It
- If you specifically want a gentler, grief-focused emotional drama, this isn’t that book — it’s genuinely a suspense thriller with real stakes and violence.
- If a slow middle section frustrates you regardless of the payoff, be aware that’s a real, commonly noted pacing issue here.
Verdict: 4.3/5
A genuinely clever structure — particularly that mid-book reveal — pulls this above a lot of domestic thrillers doing similar work, even with a saggy middle stretch. Go in knowing what it actually is: a story about a woman’s carefully buried past catching up with her in the worst possible way, not a book about shared grief.
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