In My Husband, Maud Ventura offers a striking character study of a woman whose love transcends into an obsessive compulsion. It's a disturbing yet compelling dive into a mind dominated by doubt and the pursuit of reciprocated affection.

This book doesn't have the most compelling plot, yet its pace is remarkably gripping. Each chapter is a day of the week, each day painted with a different colour, which adds a unique layer to the narrative. The vivid symbolism of each day's colour brilliantly mirrors our protagonist's emotional state and perceptions. As someone who also associates days with colours, I really enjoyed this detail.

Fans of characters like Joe Goldberg from You will appreciate the protagonist's unpredictable and toxic obsessiveness. The narrative pushes us to question the nature of love. It draws comparisons between obsessive love and comfortable, long-lasting relationships, challenging which love is truer.

However, delving into the depths of her mind does become a bit exhausting and repetitive towards the end. Her obsession does not show any signs of abating, rather, it escalates. The lack of growth or transformation can be slightly disheartening, yet it provides a stark and realistic depiction of obsession.

Despite this, Ventura ends with an unexpected twist, which adds a refreshing dimension to the book. My Husband is a fascinating exploration of the dark side of infatuation, making it a worthwhile, if intense, read.

3.75 stars.

Deliciously messed up! A French married couple, seemingly, have the perfect life. A nice house, good jobs, two lovely children and still so much in love after many years. We then enter the mind of the wife and her obsessing over the tiniest details of their relationship, to the point where she scrutinises every detail and keeps extensive notes to analyse her husband’s behaviour and to stoke her fear that he might be having an affair, ironic as this becomes.
I loved the dark aspect to the storyline although it was a little stressful to read at times. The fragility of the human psyche was stark, looking for fault even if perceivably there is none and never allowing yourself to be happy.
The end is sublime and made the whole book for me, but no spoilers.

I personally really struggled with this book. I didn’t find the plot engaging at all, it was weird I’m not such a good way, and I couldn’t connect with the main character sadly.

I had to sit on this one a while before writing my review as I didn't want to distract myself to the fact that maybe I didn't like seem to like the main character and get that mixed up with my liking of the book overall.
I enjoyed this was different. We don't find out any of the main characters names in 'My husband' Its told over 7 days from the wife's point of view who is an extremely strange and complex character. definite signs of OCD and limerence and how she acts obsessively towards her husband still after all these years. Translated from French the character is actually a French English translator and I was fascinated by that side of things, the language and different meanings. I thought the wife quite disturbed but also strangely familiar too, I enjoyed this quirky different book and will recommend to others .

3.5.

I thought this was such a great debut, it showed the lengths women are expected to go to in order to keep their husbands satisfied, to the point where they no longer are their own person but a mirror of the others’ desires. I also enjoyed how it showed how toxic and abusive they often can be, and the little (and big) ways the MC took control over her own life, or things that gave her the illusion of control I should say.

The ending bothered me though. I don’t think it was a perspective we needed, I think it worked pretty solidly without it.

I’m excited to read more from this author.

💍 REVIEW 💍

My Husband by Maud Ventura

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5/5

Publishing Date: 27th July 2023

My Husband follows a forty year old woman who is still as obsessed with her husband as the day she first met him. However, her obsession is not just love, but has developed into neuroticism, Her neuroses are beyond compare, with notebooks hidden around the house for different things, and every action planned out in advance to achieve the best possible reaction from him. She just wants to make sure he loves her just as much as she loves him, but where does the line get drawn?

I would say that, to date, this is one of the most unhinged protagonists I’ve come across, and I absolutely loved her streams of consciousness. This woman takes the typical relationship overthinking to an extreme I’ve never seen before, but it’s done without seeming unrealistic or like a caricature. I felt completely immersed in this woman’s brain as she tried to rationalise all her choices, no matter how unreasonable they actually were. The only thing I wasn’t such a massive fan of was the epilogue, and the final little twist of the story - I felt it wasn’t really necessary and would have preferred the story with out, but that’s only knocked half a star off because otherwise I thoroughly enjoyed it!
I recommend this to anyone who loves a quick, engaging read centred around an unhinged woman in her marriage.

My Husband
by Maud Ventura
Translated from the French by Emma Ramadan

Do not be fooled by the terrible cover on this book. It looks like a recipe book that came free with a 1973 appliance, but once you realise that it is, in fact, a recipe for disaster, you'll just know it's going to be delicious, if like me you devour tales about what goes on behind closed doors.

The book begins at the end. Day 7 of a week of tumult in the unnamed narrator's marriage. On a busy Sunday morning over family breakfast, her husband whispers in her ear that they need to find a moment for an important talk. Gripped by disaster her mind goes immediately to their marriage being over. The narrative rewinds to one week earlier and day by day through her interior monologue we get shocking, intimate, devious glimpses into their seemingly perfect life and marriage.

She is deeply insecure, acutely aware of her feminist self, but she superimposes her impressions of an ideal wife onto the external image of their marriage, but then she reacts with feminist rage to anything that offends her ego. It is uncomfortable to watch her struggle to maintain any power within a relationship where he who is loved most holds the cards. Over sensitive, over analytical, paranoid, yet her observations are comically astute in their capture of the male essence.

It's always hilarious to find parallels with ones own life in these larger-than-life stories, and much as I might fantasise about some of the punishments she doles out to her seemingly hapless husband, many of them are recognisable to the point of shame.

There is much to be admired about the audacious style and effective structure of this novel. It's being marketed as a literary thriller. Some will disagree with that, but I guarantee it will have you clutching your pearls and moving to the edge of your seat. I loved it.

Publication date: 27th July 2023
Thanks to #netgalley #cornerstone and #randomhouseuk for the egalley

I don’t know where to start. This novel is so intense and unique and idiosyncratic, reading it feels like being fully submerged and not being able to come up for air until if is finished.

The protagonist is a wife who is obsessed with her husband. Her hyper-fixation is fascinating to read and impossible to decipher – is this a manifestation of the love she constantly proclaims, an infatuation that has spiralled out of control, or a transaction in which she must keep track of every exchange and wrestle for the share of power which she feels she is owed.

Throughout the novel, which takes place over a week but shares memories from their fifteen year relationship, the protagonist is acutely aware of the class difference between her and her husband’s backgrounds. She spent so much time learning and performing the middle-class affluence which she now found herself surrounded by, and chastising herself for every slip up. She monitored all of the attention and inattention her husband showed towards her, and where he was often absent or distracted, relied upon his ability to financially provide as the fulfilment of his role and the affection she deserved. Her need for total control, the way she dissected every encounter to understand every possible interpretation of it, and her compulsive recording of grievances felt like an attempt to rationalise her feelings and combat the precariousness she felt in her marriage and in her new wealth.

Aside from the focus on her husband, I loved the attention given to the wife’s translation work, another embodiment of her obsessive but passionate nature. The way the wife saw and experienced the world was so unusual – in colours and associations and coincidences – but ultimately it felt unhealthy and unsustainable. This is also one of the only books I have read where an author is so open about regretting motherhood and feeling a certain disinterest in her children – something that feels liberating to read.

The entirety of this novel is stunningly written. It captivates your attention from the very beginning and then delivers a sucker-punch ending that makes you want to read the entire book. So, so good.

A French literary novel along the lines of Lullaby exploring a marriage where the couple play dark games with each other. A romance that’s darker, and more complex than normal. Set over a week, we follow this couple as the wife is pushed and tested by her husband, she feels the need to punish him.
I found this a rather unsettling read. Honestly, this couple is so dysfunctional! Communication is not key here at all, but it was darkly delicious and I was engrossed enough to keep turning the pages. Whilst it is a slow read, I did enjoy the prose and messiness of her dark thoughts. Also that ending was such a mind-spin. This is a short novel too, approximately 250 pages so it’s easy to read in one sitting.

A quiet read exploring a 40-year old woman and her fifteen years of marriage. She’s obsessed with her husband. She’s completely in love with him. At the beginning of the novel, we get a prologue where a scene of morning domesticity is depicted and a man says to his wife, he needs to talk to her. She assumes he’s leaving her. Then we rewind a week ago and we follow the couple through the week, with flashbacks taking us back to the past and we see the relationship over the years. This is a slow burning read. Narrated from the wife’s view, it’s claustrophobic and intense. It’s like an onion being peeled; it has so many layers. It is a bit on the quieter side though, and I did wish there was more action, but overall this was a very Patricia Highsmith (think Deep Water) character style of a marriage.

I thought this was an intriguing read.

Told over the space of a week, the narrator is a woman who is a teacher and translator who loves to please her and (gently!) punish her husband, from the way she dresses to noting the lack of physical affection. Her comments are written in various notebooks, and spends most of the book wondering if her husband loves her as much as she does him.

She sees days of the week as colours and relates her feelings and what should be done on these days to them.

Overall I did enjoy this, especially the little twist at the end.

Thank you to Netgalley & Cornerstone for my ARC

Please read this!

On the surface this book looks like a romantic thriller but let me tell you, this is not your typical love story. It's a darkly funny and uncomfortable exploration of codependency.

The story is told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator, a suburban housewife who becomes obsessed with her husband.

As she meticulously records her thoughts, feelings and actions, we witness her psychological descent into a world of obsession and control.

One thing I absolutely loved was how Ventura expertly explores class aspiration and power dynamics within relationships. It's a razor-sharp observation of the human psyche and the lengths some go to in order to feel connected and powerful.

I don't want to give away too much because this book is best read with no spoilers. But I will say that this is a wonderfully odd little book, full of surprises and twists that deserves our attention.

The writing is fast-paced and impressive, and I'd like to think the translation by Emma Ramadan captures the essence of the original French text.

So, if you're looking for a thought-provoking and mind-bending read that will leave your jaw on the floor I would recommend.

Thank you to NetGalleyUK and Random House UK for providing me with an advanced digital copy of this book

My Husband, the debut novel by Maud Ventura, translated from the original French by Emma Ramadan, is a slow moving, intense and deliciously dark psychological portrait of a marriage and domestic dynamic; a marriage of games and rules, offences and corresponding punishments, of hypothetical drama… all in our narrator’s head alone. The novel opens strong, presenting us with an intriguing woman preserved in an immaculate shell who, on the surface, has everything; but who is also an overthinker who microscopically analyses her husband’s every gesture; who likes things on perfect display, neat, ordered and categorised to a fault; and yet there is a resounding void. Her love and excessive passion for her husband is all-consuming, engulfing, negating the need for anything or anyone else beyond him; but she’s starting to feel like this feeling isn’t mutual, and she doesn’t like it.

Contained, mostly set in their home and at times almost seeming like a one-woman play, there are still twists and turns a-plenty in this one. In the opening pages Ventura deftly sets up a sense of the calm before the storm; a storm which eventually comes in the form of a clementine.

Swaying between the darkly funny, the neurotic, the downright dark, and the tragic, My Husband is a compulsive read exploring themes of infatuation and the bizarre, twisted logic that it can induce; of control and communication, or lack thereof; and of what happens when love goes too far, or doesn’t give enough.

A unique read, with a quietly explosive ending; I loved this.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my eARC.

This book is very different from the normal psychological thrillers I devour but none the worse for that. Firstly, the translation from the French is brilliant. Interesting that the protagonist is also a translator. To me the book is about obsession versus love. The author allows you total access to the mind of the wife. I have always been interested in women who put their husbands before their children and this is certainly the case here. The whole book is about obsessive love with a great twist at the end! Thank you Netgalley for an advance copy of this brilliant novel!

This is a delectable psychological thriller set in the confines of banal domestic life. The protagonist is a beautiful, bourgeois French woman with a husband of fifteen years and two children. Yet she remains cripplingly infatuated with her husband, the adolescent passion never having tempered, blossoming instead into a maddening, toxic obsession. She replays and scrutinises every interaction with her husband, crafts herself into his fantasy woman, notes down his preferences and patterns. In comparison his love for her is perpetually inadequate, and she resents and punishes him.

Her life is a prolonged act of theatre for an audience of one, whilst she waits for him to come home she says - ‘I watch TV, but all I see is women who are waiting, just like me. They are eating yogurt, driving a car, or spritzing themselves with perfume, but what sticks out is what's happening out of frame: they are all waiting for a man. They're smiling, they seem active and busy, but in reality they are just killing time. I wonder whether I'm the only one to notice the universal women's waiting room.’

#MyHusband #MaudVentura

I loved this introspective tale of obsession and marriage, told over the course of one week, from the point of view of a wife who is utterly obsessed by her husband.
The narrators reasoning for her unwise decisions and reactions to her husband’s behaviour and choices were deliciously maddening, and the narrator being somewhat unlikeable just made it even more readable.
As brilliant as the main part of the book is, the epilogue completely sold it to me. A clever and risky move, it immediately changed my opinion of it from “very good” book to “brilliant” book and I’m still thinking about the ending weeks after reading it.

I was pleasantly surprised by this novel. Maud Ventura has crafted an ensemble of delightfully unlikeable characters, crowned by the novel's complex protagonist, who is equal parts pitiable and unsettling. I personally found the translation to be strong and clear. And the story itself was fantastic - mysterious, amusing and shocking. Brilliant stuff.

Absolutely perfect summer reading. The translation flowed really well it started off slow but the undercurrent of tension, a wife loving her husband too much, the husband wasn’t particularly likeable but it’s fantastic short but sweet story to get stuck into and enjoy. I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending this book far and wide.
With thanks to the author and publishers and Netgalley for an honest review. All of the stars ⭐️ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I'm still not totally sure how I felt about this, it was a little bumpy to get through but I think that could be because the translation didn't properly flow? I'm not sure, either way it was slightly unsettling and frustrating at times. A fast paced original thriller with some compelling characters so it's perfect for summer reading.

This novel was completely different to what I anticipated. It is all about a teacher feeling her husband is not as loving nor caring towards her as she is to him. I kept thinking something else would happen, but it was a very one sided complaint list, with me eventually getting bored and skimming the pages. Sorry, not for me, but I’m sure others will enjoy this novel. Hopefully the authors next novel will be a more positive read.