It's Always the Husband (Campbell)

It's Always the Husband 
Michele Campbell, 2017
St. Martin's Press
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781250081803


Summary
Kate, Aubrey, and Jenny first met as college roommates and soon became inseparable, despite being as different as three women can be.

Kate was beautiful, wild, wealthy, and damaged. Aubrey, on financial aid, came from a broken home, and wanted more than anything to distance herself from her past. And Jenny was a striver—brilliant, ambitious, and determined to succeed.

As an unlikely friendship formed, the three of them swore they would always be there for each other.

But twenty years later, one of them is standing at the edge of a bridge, and someone is urging her to jump.

How did it come to this?

Kate married the gorgeous party boy, Aubrey married up, and Jenny married the boy next door. But how can these three women love and hate each other? Can feelings this strong lead to murder? When one of them dies under mysterious circumstances, will everyone assume, as is often the case, that it’s always the husband?

A suspenseful, absorbing novel that examines the complexities of friendship, It’s Always the Husband will keep readers guessing right up to its shocking conclusion. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Aka—Michele Martinez
• Birth—ca. 1962-63
• Raised—state of Connecticut, USA
• Education—B.A., Harvard University; J.D, Stanford University
• Currently—lives in the state of New Hampshire


Michele Campbell, an American author of police procedurals and, most recently, a crime thriller, was raised in Connecticut. Her father owned an aerospace manufacturing company and her mother was an office manager.

Campbell received her Bachelor's from Harvard and law degree from Stanford. She worked for three years at a New York City law firm before leaving the practice to join the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. She spent eight years as a federal prosecutor, serving as deputy chief of the Narcotics Unit.

In the 2000's she wrote a series of police procedurals under the name Michele Martinez. The novels, which feature fictional prosecutor Melanie Vargas, include Notorious (2008); Cover Up (2007); Finishing School (2006); and Most Wanted (2005).

Around the same time, Campbell said her goodbyes to the big city law and moved with her husband and two children to New England where, in addition to writing, she teaches law at Vermont Law School.

Like the female characters in her 2017 thriller, It's Always the Husband, Campbell says she has had many close female friends, a few frenemies, and only one husband, who — to the best of her knowledge — has never tried to kill her. (From various online sources.)

Book Reviews
It's Always the Husband has great character development, allowing readers to really get inside the minds of the characters until the very end, where a shocking twist leaves readers stunned (A "top pick").
Romantic Times


Readers will be left in an adrenaline inducing "whodunit" game, until the completely unpredictable conclusion. This book is perfect for fans of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies.
Redbook Magazine


[A] suspenseful if soapy debut from former federal prosecutor Campbell.… Demonstrating diabolical plotting chops and an ability to convincingly conjure settings, Campbell crafts a twisty page-turner that might have been even more powerful if so many of the principals didn’t prove rotten at the core.
Publishers Weekly


Twists, turns, and a puzzling mix of suspects …will keep readers turning the pages.
Booklist


[A] page-turner…. At times, the characters' self-involvement detracts from the suspense of the novel…. However, perhaps this is part of Campbell's larger point: complicity through silence contributes as much to each of the crimes as the acts of violence. Moody and dark in its portrayal of friendship and marriage.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
1. What is it about the college setting that allows three girls as different as Kate, Jenny and Aubrey to bond? What attracts them to one another? What repels them? If nothing terrible had happened at the end of freshman year, do you think their friendship would have had a future, or would they have gone their separate ways?

2. Kate, Jenny and Aubrey come from very different backgrounds. How is each character shaped by her upbringing and family circumstances? Can the characters’ flaws be explained by their difficult childhoods or their complicated relationships with their parents – or is this just an excuse for bad behavior?

3. Kate is at the center of two love triangles that shape the book. She gets involved with Lucas despite knowing he was Jenny’s high school boyfriend, and she has an affair with Ethan, who is Aubrey’s husband. What forces compel Kate to behave so badly? Is she simply pursuing these men in order to take them away from her best friends, or do you believe her feelings for them? How does the sense of betrayal Jenny and Aubrey feel when Kate steals their men influence their actions toward her?

4. The story cuts back and forth in time between freshman year at Carlisle and the roommates’ reunion twenty years later. Over those two decades, how do the three main characters change? Do they grow up at all? Does marriage, motherhood or career make them wiser, or kinder? At the end of the book, which of the three do you believe is the happiest, or best adjusted?

5. When Kate meets Owen Rizzo in the bar during the thunderstorm, she tells him her name is Maggie Price. Why? What role does Maggie Price’s suicide play in Kate’s inner life over the years? Do you believe she feels guilt for it? Does she feel genuine guilt for what happened to Lucas at the bridge? Is Kate capable of true remorse?

6. Why does Griff love Kate so much? What did you think of his actions toward her throughout the course of their marriage, and at the very end? Throughout the second half of the book, did you believe he killed her? Does he seem remorseful, or not? What do you think his future holds?

7. The three roommates wind up in three very different marriages to three very different men. Were the problems in these marriages a reflection of the women’s innate character flaws? Were they inevitable? If you had to pick one of the three men to be married to — Griff, Ethan or Tim — which would you pick?

8. Which of the three roommates did you like best? Which would you most like to have as a friend? Which is most like you — are you a Kate, an Aubrey or a Jenny, or some combination of the three?
(Questions from the author's website.)

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