Like unreliable narrators? Well, this one’s a doozy. Our deeply dippy protagonist is French teacher obsessed with her high-flying husband, who is never named. Her children, her job and even her lovers are all piffling sideshows as she toils to craft the perfect relationship with her beloved. Life is one big mission to make her domestic world and her appearance flawless in a bid to keep hubby interested in her.
But oh, how he can disappoint her. What a bitter pill she has to swallow when he compares her to a clementine – a supermarket fruit! – at a party. What an insult when he kisses her on the cheeks and not her lips. And how dare he go to sleep without wishing her good night. She feverishly frets that he is imminently about to leave her for someone else. She seethingly concocts various punishments for him, which he blithely fails to notice.
Darkly funny and deeply disturbing, the weirdness of this neurotic woman’s mind gets a bit grating after a while but you can’t help but read on to discover the fate of this marriage. And the delicious twist at the end makes it all worthwhile.

The author certainly draws you in with the description of the characters. The tension started almost straight away. However I didn't enjoy the book at all as although there was tension, not much happened and it was a relief to finish it

What a riveting and interesting read this was, Compelling characters and crazy twists make this a must-read thriller.

I enjoyed this read overall. She reminded my of Bree from desperate housewives. A sad story at times. Would recommend.

Utterly unhinged, spiraling out of control and deliciously dark, My Husband was an absolute treat of a book and one that I completely devoured within a day, it was so addictive! The ending made me gasp, it was perfectly manic and a thrilling way to end the week of chaos between the narrator and her husband.
Thank you to the publishers and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

Thank you Random House UK and NetGalley for the ARC. IYKYK, my reviews are always honest. I really enjoy translated literature, especially from French authors. This is not a critique, just a lil jokey joke, but if you took a shot every time she says 'my husband' you'd be in a coma LOL. A very unique, niche read.

Oooh I was so thrilled to be approved for this because it sounded SO my kind of thing and I loved it.

Our unnamed narrator is obsessed with her husband. She's also not at all honest with him about who she really is, but wants to appear in the way he wants her to be.

It's hard to have a dark novel with a manipulative female characer without it instantly being compared to Gone Girl, but I can see the similarities, As the novel goes on our lead character becomes murkier and murkier and her behaviour more unhinged.

I didn't need the slippery ending but boy did I love it.

4.5 stars

This was such a pleasant surprise - this is a French novel that came out a couple of years ago that has been translated into English this year, and I've been wanting to read more translated fiction, so this seemed perfect, and it was great! I really liked the writing style, and the narrative voice of our unnamed protagonist in particular as she goes about her days obsessing over her husband. The lyrical quality to her narration really helped the book to flow, as did the length, which felt perfect as it spans a week in the life of her neurotic overthinking of her relationship with her husband, and father of her children, who she idolises to a clearly unhealthy extent. At times almost unbelievable in its reveal of her deepest, darkest, thoughts, especially those towards her own children, Ventura portrays a protagonist whose unhinged paranoia and delusion makes for truly great reading. A lot of authors try to write within this genre of uncomfortably authentic women, but few succeed like this one.

I enjoyed reading this book. It’s a week in the life of the narrator, a 40yo married woman with two kids. Told in the first person she says she loves her husband so much, and she’s forever scared that he will leave her. She’s unsure of herself and her own opinions, always checking that her appearance is right, that she says or does the appropriate thing. So I had some sympathy for her to start with although I always read first person narratives with the possibility of the unreliable narrator. She seems to become more unhinged as the book goes on and her behaviour is crazier. Then the epilogue turns it all around!

This book will definitely get in your head and make you start to question how people think.

The ending absolutely shocked me and I loved every single page of it.

I can't wait for their next book!

I am almost as obsessed with this book as this woman is with her husband.

‘My husband’ is a stunning French novel about a translator who absolutely adores her husband. She longs for him as though she doesn’t already have him, and the deep dive into her obsessive mind is chaotic and incredible.

Something I really appreciated about this was reading a translated text that spoke a lot about the art of translation; it made me so intrigued as to what the novel would be like if I could read it in it’s original language.

The only thing I would have changed would have been the epilogue. It was such a great addition but I wished it could have been introduced slightly earlier so we could see that dynamic side-by-side maybe? It still worked brilliantly though.

I read this so quickly and I’d definitely recommend it to pull you out of a reading slump !

This short novel reads like a mash-up of Mrs March (Virginia Feito) and Forbidden Notebook (Alba de Céspedes). I think fans of Elena Ferrante will appreciate the intense narrator and her strange predilections, whims and paranoia.

Our narrator is a married woman totally obsessed and consumed with her husband. She documents all their interactions and doesn’t like her own children because they take away from time she could be spending with her husband. That’s about as much as you need to know about the plot before reading.

The book takes some dark-ish turns and the ending raised an eyebrow from this reader: a satisfying little dash of wicked humour.

An enjoyable read, albeit one that did not feel wholly original to me. 3.5/5 ⭐️

Strange and heady read about a woman obsessively in love with her husband. Billed as a thriller, I’m not sure I think that’s the precise fit, but it issss increasingly tense and unnerving as the story progresses over the course of a week. Top marks for the cover 👀 Thank you to @hutchheinemann for a copy in exchange for an honest review!

A very strange, but strangely addictive book! A monologue of a totally obsessed wife who is really not a likeable person, yet she somehow makes you feel sympathetic to her insecurities. The story just sucks you in and holds you captive to the end.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. The unsettling atmosphere drew me in and I felt completely submerged in the narrator's disturbing thoughts. It was a tense and uneasy experience, and the surprise ending caught me off guard.

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 spoile

Well this was a bizarre and compelling read. Unlike anything I have read before and I really enjoyed.
My Husband by Maud Ventura.Translated by Emma Ramadam. 

August is #WomenInTranslation month so starting off the month with My Husband, a French novel which won France's First Novel award.
"I love my husband as much as the first day I met him"
The main character of this book , on paper, has a good life. An interesting job, a daughter and a son, a lovely home, beautiful in appearance and a husband who she loves very much. So so much. Her every waking moment is consumed with thoughts of her husband, how she appears to him, how he reacts to her. On occasion she records their conversations on her phone and replays them to analyse them later. She tracks everything in a number of notebooks and sets tests for her husband that he is unaware of and then punishes him ( again in ways he is unaware of ) for his actions or inactions. Her entire life is borderline unhinged and this makes for a bizarrely  entertaining read. My Husband is set over the course of a week, getting more and more uncomfortable as each day goes by.  The narrator has synaesthesia and applies a different colour to each day of the week which really adds to this tale, as the week unfolds the tension builds until eventually she takes things to a level she never planned for.
I really liked this, hugely original , darkly funny and just plain weird at times but in the best way. A quick entertaining read with a brilliant conclusion. 
4 stars.

Brilliant, creepy crime thriller! What can I say I was fully immersed in this book and couldn’t put it down until I had read the last page.

I loved this. It was really creepy and immersive, and you truly felt entwined in the narrator's twisted mind. It was a rather stressful and uncomfortable read, and the twist at the end was really unexpected!

“I am convinced that if I made a map of my daily micro-movements, it would reveal that my husband is the sun around which the majority of my movements gravitate”
Something of a publishing phenomenon in the author’s native France, My Husband is now available in English - the novel centres around an unnamed woman, obsessed with her husband, and is a darkly funny story about love, power and control.
We follow the wife through a week in her life, continually thinking about her husband, his wants and needs. As the novel progresses, we realise the lengths this woman goes to to keep her husband happy are fairly extreme - I've seen it described as a depiction of what would happen if people took magazine advice articles far too seriously. The novel revolves around the wife’s whirling thoughts; she’s incredibly insecure, convinced that her marriage is on the precipice of disaster nearly constantly, and only her striving to be the perfect wife can save it. Ventura gets inside the narrator’s head, and the result is powerfully immersive, capturing just how acutely the wife's world revolves around her husband.
As the story unfolds, we learn more about the depth of the wife’s insecurity, and how that manifests in obsessive love for her husband. Despite having 2 jobs - as a teacher and a translator - little matters to this woman outside of her husband. Her children, she tells us, are effectively unwanted (at one point, she admits that she would survive the death of a child faster than the death of her husband - i GASPED). There’s a sense that everything is window-dressing in order for the wife to become the perfect wife - maintaining her looks, personality and charm in order to keep her husband happy. And yet - he really doesn’t seem to like her that much, and it drives her absolutely wild; she’s like a stereotype of an insecure girlfriend.
If this all sounds exhausting - it could be in the hands of a lesser writer! But Ventura’s prose is pacy and the novel moves quickly, which saves us from getting bogged down in the narrator’s thinking. It’s an impressive feat.
I inhaled My Husband; it’s a book I’d recommend reading in one or two sittings. If you enjoy books about complex women, and even more complex marriages, you’ll love this one.