A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

Title: A Reliable Wife
Author: Robert Goolrick
Type: Novel
Genre: Fiction
Series: No
Pages: 305
Copyrigt: 2009
Pubisher: Algonquin Paperbacks

Rating: 3 out of 5

Summary: from Good Reads

Rural Wisconsin, 1909. In the bitter cold, Ralph Truitt, a successful businessman, stands alone on a train platform waiting for the woman who answered his newspaper advertisement for "a reliable wife." But when Catherine Land steps off the train from Chicago, she's not the "simple, honest woman" that Ralph is expecting. She is both complex and devious, haunted by a terrible past and motivated by greed. Her plan is simple: she will win this man's devotion, and then, ever so slowly, she will poison him and leave Wisconsin a wealthy widow. What she has not counted on, though, is that Truitt a passionate man with his own dark secrets has plans of his own for his new wife. Isolated on a remote estate and imprisoned by relentless snow, the story of Ralph and Catherine unfolds in unimaginable ways.
 
With echoes of "Wuthering Heights" and "Rebecca," Robert Goolrick's intoxicating debut novel delivers a classic tale of suspenseful seduction, set in a world that seems to have gone temporarily off its axis.

Feelings:
I enjoyed reading this book. It wasn't the typical romance novel, however, that is what this book is. The writing is at times very good and others typical of the romance genera. The beginning of the book gives a little bit of a feel for what the prose can be like.

It was not snowing yet, but it would be soon, a blizzard, by the smell of it. The land lay covered already in trampled snow. The land here flew away from your eyes, gone into the black horizon without leaving one detail inside the eye. Stubble through the snow, sharp as razors. Crows picking at nothing. Black river, frigid oil. (page 3)

There are times when the book uses you, referring to the reader, and I both liked it and didn't like it when this was done because it reminded me I was reading a book.

This book isn't going to be for everyone. It is a romance but not one that individuals that normally read romance novels are going to like. This is romance with a twist and not one that is very pleasant. Ralph Truitt and Catherine Land are not what they say they are. I can also see that the writing might really annoy some people. At times I think the author may give up some of the story for the way words sound together. However, at other times I think that the author simplifies and the writing isn't as good. The story itself is not really anything new and unique. However, I did enjoy the story. That being said before you decide this is the book for you I would recommend you read at lead a bit of the first chapter.