3 stars - 3.5 stars actually. An interesting little tale of lies, deceptions, secret identities, and the woman taken in by all of it. It was more of a mystery than a thriller. Everything is pretty much explained by 2/3rds of the way through, and the remaining 1/3rd is spent on tying all the ends together. It was definitely twisted, complex and well thought out.

This really is a twisted story, with a entertwined web of lies and deciet. The story lines and plot kept me interested and gripped to find out the truth about Dominic. However, Alice's character was so gullible and naive I struggled to keep reading in places. Alice states her brother took over from her father in watching out for her, so where was he when she married a man she hardly knew with no pre nuptial. A man who had no family or friends at his wedding, who never introduced his wife to be to his family. All a little to far fetched for me.

I voluntarily read and reviewed this book, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Ooohhh I liked this one and couldn’t put it down.....told from the perspective of the’wife’ and ‘husband’ and all the stories around it. A
Gripping story !

Thank you Netgalley for the chance to read and review this title. I will review this title at a different date.

I really liked this book. It held my interest from the beginning. This is the type of book you just don't want to put down. Looking forward to reading more from this author.

A great domestic drama that had me sucked in from the first page. An easy but also an excellent read. I will be looking out for more books by this author,

This book is unbelievably gripping! I could tell from the start that Dominic was up to something, but I had no idea what. Some things made sense, but others didn’t. I felt that Alice was a bit foolish to rush into things with him, but you can see why.

This is the type of book that will have you thinking about it when you’re forced to put it down and get on with day to day life, and will have you dying to get back to it. I just couldn’t figure out what was going to happen.

When it comes, the truth is shocking. Clear your diary if you can and just read it.

Totally gripping and addictive, this is definitely one of the best psychological thrillers I’ve ever read. Such a clever plot, and excellent characters, it will completely pull you in and not let you go until the end. Superb.

Thank You NetGalley for letting me have the chance to read this book. Unfortunately it wasnt my favorite but It still had its moments and had good parts but it was just an average book. It was also a quick read which was nice.. The story is told between more than one point of view and also between past and present. Sometimes Alice's character got on my nerves and made me wish I could just yell at her through the screen. Also you could clearly tell that Dominic was too perfect. Something you knew had to be wrong!! Who is this man?! All for you to find out! I still probably would read more from this author.

This was a great read, and one I very much enjoyed. My first book by this author.

Alice married Dominic Gill after a whirlwind romance and a chance meeting in a lift.
As time passes, small things start to worry Alice; why has she never met her mother in law? Why didn’t any of Dominic’s family come to his wedding? All things that he manages to wave away and explain.
••Spoilers•••
Everything changes one fateful evening however when Dominic is killed in a car accident, At the mortuary, his brother confirms the body isn’t Dominic Gill and donut begins.
Who is the man Alice has married and why did he feel the need to lie to her?

A unique twist on that old saying....he's not the man you think he is...when it turns out, he really isn't. This alone sets the reader up for a really good mystery. Who is he? Why did he marry and live for 3 years as someone else? Exactly what is going on? I really enjoyed the book. Great backstory, characters that seem real and a great mystery that takes us some places you wouldn't expect!!!

I found this good at first and despite plenty of twists and turns It was a little predictable. Definitely worth a read 4 stars.

I became a fan of Alison James books after reading her Detective Rachel Prince series. I am still waiting for the series to move forward. In the meantime, her psychological thrillers are keeping me quite entertained.

Alice Palmer thought she had met the love of her life when Dominic Gill came into her world. However, she soon found out that Dominic wasn’t really who she thought he was. As a matter of fact, Alice might not have known her husband at all.

I know this sounds like a familiar marriage betrayal trope but I can assure you that the author did add a unique spin to it. The story is narrated in two timelines set in the past and the present. We get to follow Alice’s life after she found out that her husband had deceived her. We are also taken to the past when the couple first met. As always with this kind of timelines, I enjoyed the past narratives the most. I couldn’t wait to unravel the mystery that is Alice’s life and marriage.

The author did a wonderful job crafting the characters. I thought Alice was rather sympathetic. She did come across as quite naïve also but I liked her and could understand her predicament. I mean, how well do we know our spouses? Do we really know everything about them? So as not to post any spoilers, I will not say anything about her husband. Let me just mention that I love that the author decided to make him one of the narrators. The support characters were also well developed.

The Man She Married by Alison James is fast-paced, suspenseful and quite entertaining. There are some sections that require suspension of disbelief. This didn’t impede on my enjoyment of the narrative though. I also thought the writing and structuring of the narrative was quite brilliant. The reveals come early in the story but unspooling the intricate tale made the story suspenseful to the last page. I definitely recommend this one to fans of this genre.

Wow wow wow!!! Well deserved 5 stars!!
Had me completely hooked. Read it in 2 days as I found it hard to put down. Brilliantly shocking twists, not once a dull moment. Best book I've read yet this year!! Highly recommended. First book ive read by Alison James. But will now look out for more

What would you do if the police turn and tell you your husband is dead. You go to identify him and his so called brother tells you that this is not Dominic. You have been living a lie what are you going to do . And to top every thing off you are pregnant. Alice decided to find out the truth one way or another. Alice eventually gets a private investigator to help her find out the truth.
Loved this book
Thanks NetGalley

The prologue wets our appetite of what is to come. The first chapter opens with Alice, on Valentines Day, revealing to her friend JoJo that she is pregnant. She anticipates telling her husband, Dominic, the news over a romantic dinner that evening but he doesn’t return home and she is left opening the door to two police officers. The book then goes back in time to when they first met and events leading up to their wedding and we then realise that he is keeping lots of secrets from Alice. We then come back to the present day and find that he was killed in a car accident and then Alice’s nightmare starts. Did she ever really know her husband? This is a brilliant read with great suspense and it had me hooked from the start. I always look froward to Alison James’s books and this one certainly didn’t disappoint.
Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

I'm going to round this rating up from 3.5* to 4*.

The book started off slow for me. Full of cliches and obvious pointers to where the story was going, and it really didn't captivate my attention. However, when the story actually kicked off in part 2, I enjoyed it much more and couldn't put it down. The only reason I'm saying 3.5* is because some people could have given up at that point if they hadn't persevered.

I will definitely be recommending it though after reading the whole story.

This book was very intense. It kept me wanting more and more. Lots of twists and turns to hold my interest. Very fast paced . the book is actually told by 3 different characters. I would definately like to read more from this author.

The day Alice discovers that she's pregnant, she sends a text to her husband. He never responds. Hours later police appear on her doorstep. Her husband was involved in a car accident and died at the scene. Her husband, Dominic, is dead.

When she's taken to the morgue to identify him, she's not the only one waiting. Her husband's brother, who she's never met, is also their. She identifies her husband, but his brother insists the man laying there is not his brother.

So who is the dead man? Who did Alice marry? What secrets was he keeping?

This psychological thriller is told in two parts .. past and present ... one part by Alice, the other by the man she married. Characters are deftly drawn and they all seem to have issues of one kind or another. There is page-turning action with twists and turns along the way.

Many thanks to the author / Bookouture / Netgalley for the digital copy of this psychological thriller. Read and reviewed voluntarily, opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.

I just want to begin this review by saying it’s entirely possible I’m missing something. At the time I began writing this review, the average rating for The Man She Married was 4.3 stars.

Unfortunately, it was a 2.5 star read for me.

I think I’m a pretty liberal reviewer. Most of the books I read get at least 3 stars for being “okay.” I don’t think that’s a bad rating. In my reviews, an okay/3-star book means it’s worth the read but it probably isn’t gonna knock your socks off. 4 stars means I loved it but that I found a few nit-picky things to knock a star off for…because I’m stingy with the 5 stars. So if I give something 5 stars, that’s because it blew me away and I either couldn’t find a bad thing to say about it or whatever bad I could say wasn’t bad enough to take even half a star from the book.

Not everyone is going to agree with me. Reviews are opinions and highly subjective. The Man She Married is apparently a great example of people not agreeing with me.

The Story:
Okay. I’m not normally one to keep reading a book I’m not enjoying. So obviously not awful.

I enjoyed the writing itself and my attention was held enough to get me through the book. And seriously… I absolutely loved this opening! It gave me chills!

“As I draw closer, I glimpse the tip of his nose against the pleated white satin of the coffin lining. The sight is so odd and other-worldly, it makes my head swim and the carpeted floor feel unsteady under my feet. My heart is pounding as I get close enough to see him; all of him.

I have no idea who gave the undertaker the suit and tie he’s wearing; I only know it wasn’t me. I take in the curve of his mouth, the sweep of hair from his forehead, the angles of his profile. On his left hand is a wedding ring. I remove my own wedding ring and drop it into the coffin.

The only thought in my mind is how this is like one of those riddles you find inside a Christmas cracker. Because the man lying inside my husband’s coffin is not my husband.

He’s a total stranger.”

So I went into this expecting to love it! But I didn’t really enjoy it until I was 88% done. I know this because I made a note that said “Okay now it’s getting good…here? At Part Three???? What the… “

I felt cheated.

Because the author can write. And she can tell a story. But this story didn’t work for me. It’s too unbelievable and predictable. I know that you go into the story knowing that Alice’s husband wasn’t who he claimed to be – it’s inferred in the title, it’s spelled out in the book description, and it’s literally on the first page. But did everything have to be so easy to see coming?

I really want to give examples, but I’m keeping this spoiler-free. That’s the really hard thing about thriller/mystery/suspense reviews – almost everything is a spoiler!

The Characters:
Ugh. Alice has got to be one of the most naive women to ever have existed. There were about a billion warning signs about her husband that she flat out ignored. And it’s not because she’s led a totally sheltered life. She just ignores the obvious right in front of her. It’s not just with her husband, it’s with everything! I just couldn’t relate to her at all.

My favorite character was Alice’s best friend, JoJo. She may have saved this book for me. I just wish she’d have shown up on the page more often. She’s smart, funny, independent and wildly loyal and loving despite Alice’s oblivious-ness.

I wanted to murder-kill Alice’s husband, Dominic. Or at least smack him a few hundred times? Which is probably how I was supposed to feel so he’s a good villain.

Conclusion/Overall Impression:
Obviously, there are plenty of people who liked this book. But it’s just wasn’t a great read for me. The writing itself is good and I’d read another Alison James book but the characters killed this one for me. The last part of the book was enjoyable though.

Wow where do I start!! Thank you @netg for this book in exchange for an honest review. I started the book and couldn’t help but feel like I had read it before, I think maybe it was just very similar to something else but I soon got past that and I was not disappointed. This book is extremely fast paced, has short chapters and very very gripping leaving that need for me. To all my thriller readers I would highly recommend this! Yes it’s unrealistic at times but I sometimes love that, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for more by Alison James!