Intriguing book about Emma, mother and academic, her husband starts digging into her past innocently and finds out all sorts….kept me gripped with the backdrop of a lovely setting

A really well thought out plot with twists, turns and plenty of surprises all the way through. The author has a very successful way of making the reader connect with all the various characters on different levels. I really did want to know if Emma ever found another crab though!

This is one of the books I requested just because of the title and when I first picked it up I was like oh sweet I’m in the mood for a romance. How wrong was I.. this book got described to me by a friend as a domestic thriller and they couldn’t have been more spot on. I read this book over the space of 2 days and I couldn’t put it down. The twists and storyline were so captivating and really draws you in. Also the short chapters helped the pace of the book flow.

If you're looking for a lovely, fluffy romance, this is not it. I must admit, I was expecting, from the title, that this would be just that. Instead I got a tale with twists and turns, secrets and lies, and it was actually a pleasant surprise.

Leo and Emma are that couple - the sickening one who are deeply in like and love. The one everyone envies.

But a simple discovery unravels their whole life and from then on in, we are left questioning as well. Full of gasp moments that weren't predictable, nor too far-fetched. This was a smart and compulsive read that I raced through.

This was a great suspense novel which really focuses on themes of loss, betrayal and how to forgive someone. Gripping, it follows Leo and Emma, who've already suffered their own heartbreak in the form of cancer and infertility, as Leo preemptively writes Emma's obituary. I enjoyed this read, though the actions of Jill, Emma's best friend, seem somewhat overblown.

A bit of a mixed bag for me. Some parts were interesting even enthralling but then either a character would do something that no one would really do or the plot would throw a curved ball and I mixed what the point was.
Didn’t help that I couldn’t take to Emma so no pulling at my heart strings like I think it was meant to.

This book for me was a slow burner – up until 50% of the way through I couldn’t quite engage with it – we knew from the get go that there were secrets in Emma’s life and I wanted things to start unravelling, and in my opinion it took too long for the reader to get to that point. I love Rosie Walsh’s books, so I stuck with it, but I’m not sure if a new reader would.

I couldn't get my head around Sheila's character - couldn't quite figure out what her purpose was, and by the end I still wasn't sure why she was there - her past was hinted at, but never really explained.

Saying all that, once we got past the half way mark, boy were we on a journey together and I enjoyed the second half of the book much more than the first part!!

I don’t know any other author who so beautifully combines a tender love story with aspects of a domestic thriller. Usually doubt is cast on the central relationship to such a degree that the reader stops rooting for them. Here I was really confused, because I believed in Leo and Emma. Each character felt so real and they were easy and comfortable together. When we flashed back to their marriage proposal it was probably the wrong moment, rushed and definitely not Insta-ready, but it was touching and honest. I really felt Emma’s eagerness to be with Leo. I couldn’t believe she would then have an affair, but the evidence did point that way. As the truth started to come out I felt so emotional for this young woman, who really had no one left to help her make good choices once she’d lost both parents. No one is harder on Emma than she is on herself and it was sometimes sad and painful to be in her head. I thought the author used the landscape beautifully and knowing Alnmouth well, I could see how it’s cottages and incredible view of the sea would soothe the mind. Although I’ve also been therein the midst of a storm and as the waves lashed against the rocks and driving rain set in, it was very inhospitable. I think this shows the extremes of Emma’s mood as she’s gone through her life, dealing with very deep lows and then sunny, enthusiastic highs. Her house in Hampstead Heath which was her grandmother’s gives us some indication of how her mind feels. She’s never sorted through her grandmother’s things, so is living a new life cluttered with reminders of the past. She feels safe there, it’s possibly the only place she ever has. Leo is coming from a solid background. I loved his relationship with his brother and it’s likely he’s never felt truly lost and alone. Rosie Walsh has created a very rare novel and engrossing novel. So much so that every time I was away from Leo and Emma’s story I longed to back home with my book. She’s packed her book full of twists and turns, but with so much tenderness and love it never fully veered into domestic noir. Despite her secrets and lies, I never stopped wanting Emma to be with Leo and her little girl. I came away feeling that we never truly know another person’s journey, but we can empathise and try to understand. Emma’s mistake was thinking Leo wouldn’t love her if he knew the truth, but maybe she has underestimated the depth of that love.

It is absolutely impossible not to love Emma and Leo, the married couple who are the main characters of Rosie Walsh's new novel The Love of My Life. I felt for them and wanted them to overcome the many hurdles presented in this sharply written and tense novel.. The story is largely told from both their perspectives, which worked well.

The book has some similarities with her first novel, The Man Who Didn't Call, with relatable yet flawed characters, a plot that reveals unexpected story lines and with friendship and love running through it. The research that the author must have put into the characters jobs was evident and added an interesting angle. (I now want to be an obituary writer!)

It appears that I am officially a Rosie Walsh fan and I will definitely read whatever she writes. My book club read her first novel, and I think this one would also make a good book club read. Thank you to the author, her publishers and #NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review.

I really enjoyed this book from Rosie Walsh. The chapters are narrated by Emma, who has recently got the all-clear from cancer, and her husband, Leo, an obituary writer. As Emma has had a brush with death, Leo has started drafting her obituary. In doing so, he starts to uncover some things he didn't know about his wife. These little things turn into much bigger things, and eventually Leo is on a mission to find out who his wife really is and all about her past.

It's not pacy like a thriller, but it's done at a refreshing contemporary fiction tone, which works really well, as this isn't really a thriller but more of a slowly unravelling mystery. The middle section of the book goes back in time to a younger Emma, and then the third section brings us back to present day and ties everything up, with some twists along the way.

I really enjoyed both Emma's and Leo's parts of the story, and I felt their frustrations and anxieties with them. It was a real page turner, I couldn't put it down from about the half way point, I just had to find out what the outcome of it all was. It was very realistic and honest. It does deal with cancer, parental death, and mental illness, so I would give trigger warnings for those.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

The Love of my Life by Rosie Walsh was a winner for me. I was a big fan of The Man Who Didn’t Call which was Rosie’s debut, so I was sceptical about this one I won’t lie 🤔 Good job I enjoyed it hey?!!😂

This book focuses on married couples Emma and Leo, a long with young daughter Ruby. Emma loves her husband but she is basically one big lie 😅 When Emma’s past life comes knocking, she must show Leo that she is the woman he fell in love with, but what will he do?

I loved the page turner element with this one. Who is Emma? So many twists in this story which kept me on my toes. I had a love/hate relationship with Emma throughout the book. Do we really ever truly know the people we fall in love with?!! Gosh that’s deep and depressing so let’s move on…🙈😂
This book has suspense for sure, but its full of emotion and romance too. What a combo! It was a really thought provoking story and parts really did break my heart 💔 Gosh the ending got me…No spoilers! Such a well written book with plenty to talk about so would be a great bookclub choice I think.

The Love of my Life is out now and I recommend for fans of romance/mystery, if there is such a genre 😂

I loved Rosie’s first book and was eagerly anticipating this one. The premise is such a good one, and the result delivers a great story with some lovely characters. There were moments where I wondered what genre I was in, but I am not sure that actually matters as long as the story is an absorbing one - which this is.

"The Love of My Life" is a great combination: the plot of a family drama but with the twists, turns, secrets and reveals of a thriller. This is going to be as big as "The Man Who Didn't Call"!

Beautifully written and engaging story. It’s an emotional ride which keeps you guessing throwing in lots twists throughout the story.

I loved Rosie’s first book The Man who Didn’t Call and this is is a another wonderful story.

Definitely one to pick if you are looking for a well written, engaging and gripping story that will keep you turning the pages.

A very worthy 5 stars!

In a Nutshell: Great in bits and pieces but doesn’t come together into a cohesive whole. This might have ended up a strong favourite of mine if I could have connected with the writing style better. But the disconnect with the plot and the decisions of one MC resulted in a strictly average experience.

Story Synopsis:
Emma and Leo have been married for seven years and live happily with their three year old daughter Ruby and their dog John Keats. Through ups and downs, they’ve been supportive of each other, even when Emma gets diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and begins the uncertain journey to recovery. Leo is an obituarist by profession and as Emma, a marine biologist, happens to be a somewhat famous celeb through her stint on TV as a presenter, Leo works on a stock obituary for his wife as his way of coping through her treatment. To his shock, his research leads him to realise that the Emma he knew from the past decade is a very different person. Who is the real Emma?
Emma, meanwhile, realise that Leo has begun cracking her carefully constructed shell. Will she be able to tell him about “the love of my life” without putting their marriage in jeopardy?
The story comes to us in the first person perspectives of Leo and Emma.


In terms of its premise, the book felt tailor-made for me. I loved the drama plus mystery vibes in the blurb. However, this doesn’t transform well to reality. The book seems like a hodgepodge of various genres – romance, suspense, family drama, literary fiction, domestic thriller – without doing justice to most.

Emma seems to have a multitude of secrets, ranging from the trivial to the terrifying. But I wasn’t convinced at all by her reasons to keep so much of her past a secret from Leo. Some of the justifications were valid, I agree. But the rest were just RIDICULOUS! I simply didn’t get her! The rest of the characters, bar Leo, also seem shifty, not leading you to believe any of them. Plus, there’s a deliberate attempt to mislead through the interconnected characters (Don’t get me started on the coincidence of so many random characters being known to each other!) Leo is the only one I found somewhat real in his emotions and the only one I felt somewhat sorry for.

The book began terribly slow, but in a strange irony, the initial section was the best part for me. The way in which the characters are established and the suspense is created is wonderful. As the book progressed, its pace increased somewhat but the secrets and the twists became more and more farfetched. I want my book twists to be more “Wow!” than “WTF!” Thus my rating kept sliding downwards with every turn of the page. The ending was too silly and predictable. A story needs to have an element of believability. This one didn’t meet that criterion by far.

On the positive side, for the first time ever, I saw a character working as an “obituarist”. I had always guessed that newspapers might be having some obituaries in stock but the extent to which this system covers potential deaths was very interesting to read. I loved Ruby – she was adorable. I liked how the title could range from something romantic to something creepy, depending on how you read it. (And both those meanings apply to the book.)

All in all, this could have been a great story for me. But the haphazard development of the situations and the unrealistic behaviour of most of the characters made this a strictly average experience.

2 stars.

My thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Love of My Life”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn't work out better.

After enjoying Rosie Walsh's first book, The Man Who Didn't Call I knew I wanted to read more by this author.

"The Love Of My Life" introduces us to Emma and Leo. Emma will do anything for her family, they are both her life, everything she loves about her life is thanks to the two of them. However, virtually everything she has told them about herself is a lie, how much longer can the secrets lay hidden and just why is she having to keep these secrets in the first place?

I did enjoy this title but I must admit I was a little confused by what genre it wants to be, initially it seemed to start out as a rom-com, typical chick lit but soon this has turned into a mystery/thriller before another twist back to the chick-lit so this did hamper my enjoyment slightly. Nevertheless I was kept enthralled by the twists and turns uncovered throughout the story and it really does go to show that the first assumptions of where I believed the story would take us couldn't have been further from the truth, a very smart and sophisticated style of writing is used to convey this brilliantly.

Continue to want to read more by this author in the future, a read you won't be disappointed by.

Do we ever really know the person we choose to share our life with? That's the central question of Rosie Walsh's book. Emma and Leo seem to have the perfect marriage but when the past begins to emerge behind carefully concealed walls their world changes. I enjoyed this even though at times I felt that plot points were telegraphed unsubtly. The characters were well written and the story paced well. (Copy received from Netgalley in return for an honest review)

This book wants to an edge of your seat thriller - and there are a satisfying number of twists and turns. But there is something about the pace that makes it too slow and not quite gripping enough. The two handed narration meant that I didn't really get invested in either lead character. I did not care for the 'other woman' so I did not feel any urgency to rush to her aid in the final chapters.
I finished it but it has not left any lasting impact.

Such a clever storyline! I really enjoyed this novel and thought it really well done with very interesting characters. The writing style, plot, and unique take made this a winner for me.

What a great read. The first novel I have read by Rosie and I absolutely loved it. Highly recommend.