I was excited about this from the blurb but found it didn't live up to what I thought it could be. Slightly disappointing overall.

𝐉𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐲, 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟, 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐚 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥. 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐲𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞. 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐃𝐚𝐥𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐢𝐦.

𝘜𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘱𝘦𝘭𝘭 is a novel about grief and confronting the walls death puts in place. Sandra’s husband Dale dies unexpectedly, leaving behind loose ends in business and finances that give her no choice but to sort through his email. She stumbles upon a name, Ryan Whitehurst- someone she knew nothing about. Owed an explanation, what better way to discover what their relationship entailed than to write to Ryan as if she is Dale. Let him live on, engage the young seductress. She uncovers intimacies, and soon is sharing her own with a clueless Ryan, who doesn’t know Dale no longer walks the earth. How much truth can she handle? How can she confront or rave at a dead man? What is she looking for by deceiving his other woman? Will she gain closure or open her own wounds deeper. Jealousy? Can you feel jealousy over a dead man?

As a distraction she begins helping a single mother, whom she meets by chance at Best Day, a clinic she goes to hoping to find help for her own grief vertigo. Lee takes to her and has entrusted her to care for Tina, her little girl. Before long, Sandra is ensnared by the tangled mess of their life. Despite having something besides Dale’s death and betrayal to focus on, Sandra is still having panic attacks wondering how much of their life together was true and how much was a lie. Nothing is any clearer and even with Tina she can’t stop playing make believe, pretending Dale is still alive.

She discovers there is money, but he couldn’t have planned his own death, of course not, was this guilt money, a prelude to divorce? Was he planning on leaving her, to take up with Ryan? Will she ever really know? Does Ryan have any answers? How can you deal with the pain of lies after death? As she believes, when Dale died, his passions died with him. But was Sandra ever a passion of his too?

The novel drives home the fact that love is unbalanced, that we never know for sure how those in our lives feel about us. We can only be sure of our own feelings, if even that. Does interest in another, whether acted upon or not, erase everything that we have shared with our spouse? Make our love a lie? It was an ok read, nothing riveting but it’s meant to be about grief and betrayal. I think maybe the introduction of Lee into the story was a bit of an obstacle even though I understand it was distraction from Sandra’s very solid pain. A quiet tale.

Publication Date: June 15, 2021

Northwestern University Press

There were hints of where this story could have gone to make it more interesting, but unfortunately it never did. Was Dale’s death really an accident? Instead, it went into the realm of a possible affair, which didn’t go far enough to capture my attention. I also did not understand Sandra’s motivations with Lee, the addict, and her daughter. The story dabbed on various scenarios but didn’t commit fully. Sorry, this book was a disappointment .

Give this one a hard pass. Too much going on, none of it makes any sense and it never comes together in any cohesive way.

This book didn’t quite live up to my expectation to be honest. It was pretty well written and I did find it reasonably enjoyable, but it didn’t really’ ‘grab’ me the way I want a book to.
All in all it was good but unremarkable.

UNDER THE SPELL is a marvelous study in grief, marriage and how and who we choose to love. Sandra has lost her husband Dale to a tragic accident. As she struggles to find her way forward, she find that her relationship was not what she thought; Dale had friends she never knew of, friends who clearly meant a lot to her. As Sandra tried to find equanimity in the face of her loss, and how to relieve some bizarre symptoms arising from her grief, she meets Lee, and her young daughter, Tina and finds that her cure might lie in helping others. A Lovely and interesting read.