A solid paced thriller that will have you turning those pages!

Chapters were told from different POVs which I enjoyed and worked well to bring everything together.

A couple of big twists that propelled the story even further and the ending I really enjoyed. That last page just left your mind wondering.

A very twisty-turny novel, with convoluted plot lines that go on through the years and lots of coincidences before a final punchline. Points of view come from New Wheeler's first wife, his daughter and his new fiancee, as he approaches the end of his prison sentence for multiple murders.

A well-told story with mostly convincing characters, it sucks you in even when the coincidences stack up high.

‘Happily Ever After’, Mary Horlock’s latest novel, has a heavily ironic title. Over the course of the novel we are asked to think about various fairy stories and legends, and consider what they tell us about human nature and how the happy endings come about. Just so in Horlock’s story – but can there actually be satisfaction for someone who supposes at the beginning of the novel, ‘Let’s say he didn’t kill her. Let’s say he married her instead’?

The novel is told from three different perspectives: Joan, ex-wife of serial killer Ned Wheeler, his daughter, Cass, and his fiancée Florence Watkins. Florence is a prison visitor and her religious beliefs chime with Ned’s born-again religiosity. In her podcasts, she explains that everyone needs a second chance and how she will help him adjust to the outside world when his parole board review is successful. There are plenty who think she’s deluded, not least Cass and her estranged mother.

Middle-aged Joan has finally overcome her alcohol addiction. She lives alone, back on the Isle of Wight, and runs a craft shop. She is determined to ensure that Ned never leaves prison and has been engaging in some amateur sleuthing to try to link some cold case murders to Ned. Looking back, she recognises that she was deluded in her love for him, often stoned or drunk, and certainly a less than ideal mother. She would love to be reunited with Cass; the scripts of recorded tapes to her daughter make up much of this narrative.

Cass just wants to live a quiet life with her husband, Peter, and two children. She’s making quite sure that the latter are not left to their own devices, as she was. However, when her grandmother dies and Cass is a benefactor of her will, she knows she will have to face the past.

This novel focuses on how three very different women try to find their ‘happily ever after’. The reader becomes well acquainted with them and there are several sections which are psychologically really plausible. However, whilst the end of the novel is suitably twisted and an amusing homage to one fairy tale in particular, it does take the narrative from the plausible to the extremely far-fetched!

My thanks to NetGalley John Murray Press for a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review.

Ned Wheeler has been in jail for thirty years, having been found guilty of murdering a young man and raping and murdering a young woman. Now he’s up for parole and is expecting to get it, especially since he’s become “born again” and has found a nice woman who’s willing to marry him and provide a home. The story isn’t about Ned, though – it’s about the three women who will be most affected by his release: his ex-wife, Joanie, his daughter, Cass, and Florence, the woman who tells her social media followers that she has fallen in love with Ned. And it’s about another death – a young girl, Hannah, whom everyone assumes Ned murdered too, though there was never enough evidence to charge him with that one.

Mary Horlock is new to me and, although she seems to have several previous books to her name, I think she’s new to this genre too (though I may be wrong). I admit it – it was the cover that first attracted me to this one, but I was intrigued by the blurb too. On starting reading, it took me a while to warm up to it, but once I did, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Though the story is dark enough, there’s a vein of humour running through the voices of the three women who take turns as first-person narrators. The crimes, after all, were thirty years ago, so there’s none of the rawness of first grief that so much contemporary crime fiction forces on us.

Horlock shows us the impact on Cass and Joanie of having been related to a notorious killer – Cass with mental health problems that have left her in the hands of counsellors for most of her life, and Joanie drowning her sorrows in drink until she finally managed to turn her life around. But they are both survivors in the strong sense of that word – they have both made new lives for themselves and are more than coping, they are thriving. Florence is more ambiguous. Why is she attracted to a murderer? It’s part of the wider question of why convicted murderers so often seem to attract women. Is it the appeal of the bad boy? Or in Florence’s case, could it possibly be to boost her social media profile? Surely not!

It’s not a dual timeline in the sense that we are firmly in the present in the days leading up to Ned’s release. But the narratives of the three women take us back to those long ago days of the 1970s, when young hippy Joanie went to the big music festival on the Isle of Wight, fell in love with Ned and never left. She tells us of her relationship with the husband she adored, and we see too her love for her daughter, although her hippy lifestyle made her a somewhat casual mother, leaving Ned’s mother to do the hard work of child care while she drank and drugged and partied. We hear about her reaction to Ned’s conviction, and her spiral into addiction which led eventually to the estrangement of mother and daughter. And we learn about her recovery and her life now. Joanie’s narrative is presented as a series of letters explaining all of this to Cass. I loved Joanie’s voice, and I loved the humour in her narrative – here’s a woman who has undoubtedly grown as life’s experiences have battered her, and who can now look back with some self-deprecating amusement at her younger self.

Cass I found harder to like, although I sympathised with her most, as the real innocent among them all. She’s brittle and bitter – both hardly surprising under the circumstances – but she has also found a man she loves who loves her too, and they have two children. Cass has changed her name though we never learn her new name, and she really doesn’t want any contact with her father even if he is, as he claims, a changed man. She also doesn’t want to hear from the mother whose drinking made her adolescence a time of worry and embarrassment. She’s not willing to believe that her mother may have changed either. Her narrative reads like her private thoughts or perhaps a journal – for her eyes only.

Florence, on the other hand, we hear through her podcasts, as she tells not just the reader but the whole world about her new love and her plans to marry a rapist and murderer. We hear her react to the comments she receives – the heart emoji brigade declaring this some kind of new version of Romeo and Juliet, the genuinely concerned people who feel she’s making a mistake and worry for her, and the trolls, abusing her in the usual sexualised misogynistic terms. But what is driving Florence? She doesn’t seem naive or stupid – can she really be in love? Even if she is, can she really believe love is enough in this situation? Or does she believe, as she claims, that it is her Christian duty to forgive? Even her Christian followers seem to think there’s a pretty big gulf between forgiving a murderer and marrying him...

The mystery that holds the story together is the death of Hannah, and as Joanie and Cass go over their old memories they begin to see things they didn’t spot as relevant at the time. The ending goes quite far over the top, but the strain of humour that runs through the book means that it works. And avoiding spoilers, I’ll just say I loved how it was left, though I feel the very end may prove to be divisive. A very enjoyable read, and I’ll certainly be keeping an eye open for Horlock’s next book!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. From the opening I was gripped. Very well written with a variety of engaging characters and a story that unfolds with twists you just don’t see coming, Both the novel start and surprise ending will stay with me.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review and to the author for a delightful read.

I really enjoyed this book. Joan and Ned met at the Isle of Wight festival, married and had a daughter Cass, and lived a hippy life at Ned's mother's place.
Years later, Joan and Cass are estranged from each other. Ned is hoping for parole from prison for a murder sentence, being supported by his fiancée Florence. Joan and Cass do not want this to happen.
The book tells the story of their lives, and there are still further revelations, and a surprising twist to come. I couldn't put it down. Recommended

oh blimey this was such a clever book. you know when you just feel uplifted when you come across just some really good writing. this was just that and Mary was seamless for me with this one. it also makes it far to easy to just keep reading through and sometimes that gets in the way of life!
i couldn't stop from being impressed with every part of this book. and how original it took the premise. i dont know how authors manage it each time, to keep put a different spin on certain themes or tropes. but not many have done quite as well as i found this one doing.
the story is told in multiple points of view which is a firm favourite of mine. i love how you find out just enough, but want more, and then suddenly you switch. and so you have almost more cliff hangers in one book because each part of someones story leaves you each chapter with more to gasp or think on.
the books tells us the pov of three woman. all involved with one man. and to say i was not almost reading over myself to get through this is an understatement. i could not read fast enough.
i also love the timelines for this one and the cover fits perfectly with that. and it gave an almost sepia lens to what i was seeing in my mind.

This is the third book that I’ve read by this writer. - she’s written three books!
Horlock has surpassed herself with Happily Ever After. The characters are perfectly drawn and, I have to say that the book has one of the best openings to a novel that I’ve read in a very long time.
Read it!

A cleverly written drama.
Well written and interesting characters.
A good who done it.
My thanks to netgalley and the publisher for my copy.

Ohh this was sooo good!

The story is told from 3 POVs: The serial killers Ex wife, his estranged daughter and the woman who thinks she can save him.
To say I was hooked is an understatement!

From the hippy summer of 1970 to the small world of 1980's Isle of Wight, Mary has woven two periods of time effortlessly. It was such a different time then, and it makes you realise how much the world has changed since.

There were plenty of twists and turns thoughtout to keep you guessing, and whilst I started to have my suspicions about one charcater early on that turned out to be correct (yey me!) The ending was a shocker! I thought this was really cleverly written and one which likes to keep the reader on their toes!

Thank you to @netgalley for an early ARC of Happily Ever After ✨️
I'm very excited to talk to other bookworms about this one when it comes out in July!