This book is billed as a psychological thriller, but the emphasis is far more on the psychology, unless you consider waiting to find out what actually happened at the moment of crisis as thrilling. And the author really does make you wait for it, as this is a first-person narrative recounted by a most unreliable narrator, who only gradually reveals, one crucial tidbit after another—drop by drop—the events of the moment in question. Rather, it’s the account of a complex marriage and of the development of a powerful artistic skill, where nothing is as it first appears, and the insightful examination of the expectations of and the costs exacted from women by the institution of marriage and by making art.

J.B. Blackwood is a novelist married to a filmmaker much older than she, as she was his student when they met. They’ve been married for 14 years, and in the years since, he has become a much-lauded cult figure, and she has published several novels, the most recent of which—not yet released—is about to win a major literary prize, she has been informed. (The prize goes unnamed in the book, but think of something at the level of the Man Booker and you have it.) In short, her star is most assuredly on the rise, while his has rather lost its shine, and the strain on their marriage is growing. So she arranges for a long anniversary cruise to try to patch things up, and while they’re plying the cold waters off Japan, the husband goes overboard during a terrible storm. In intense shock, she is at first unable—or is it unwilling?—to recall what happened on deck in the moments leading up to the fall, and, as her mind courses over the events, she goes back in time and creates that portrait of a marriage and incrementally approaches the critical moment.

Don’t read this if you’re looking for a thriller, but if you’re interested in a nuanced, insightful look at the power dynamics in a marriage of two ambitious artists and of the struggle female artists face to be taken seriously, this is the book for you.

dear god this was way too long. i couldn't even finish it, there was just nothing compelling me to keep reading

Honestly, I had a hard time with this book. I could not for the life of me get through the entire book while caring about the plot or characters. Maybe the fact that I read it while being in a reading slump was the reason behind it or the fact that I struggled a lot with the writing style, i don't know, but overall I just did not vibe with the book while I was reading it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Grove Atlantic for sending me an advanced copy.

I love a book about power dynamics in relationships and I really enjoyed The Anniversary because of this. It’s definitely a slow burn and it’s a domestic mystery - I don’t want to say thriller because it was slow in parts. But I did enjoy the discourse on how writers “see” truth as well as the older professor/younger student he marries discussion.

In <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64667865-the-anniversary" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><em>The Anniversary</em></a> by Stephanie Bishop, author J.B. Blackwood, takes her husband, Patrick, a famous film director, on a cruise to celebrate their anniversary. J.B. is nursing a secret - she has won a yet-to-be-announced major literary prize. A storm hits, and Patrick falls from the ship. That might sound overly dramatic, but actually, this book is a moral thriller, and the story unfolds from that point onward (and there's a lot more to it).
<p style="padding-left: 40px;"><em>In a story... the feeling of not knowing what happens next is often a thing of pleasure: the cornerstone of our delight... But the same feeling of not-knowing, as it happens in one's real life, is rarely so pleasurable...</em><!--more--></p>
Although I'm busting to reveal more elements of the plot, I won't. Instead, I'll highlight some of the major themes.

1. Power in relationships

There's power in every relationship - sometimes one person holds the power, and sometimes it shifts.

Patrick was J.B.'s  former professor. He was also much older than J.B. When they met and then married, he was a cult figure. Years later, as his success was starting to wane, J.B.'s star began to rise. The story moves backwards and forwards in time to reveal the changing dynamic in their relationship, which in turn raises questions about some of  J.B.'s decisions.
<p style="padding-left: 40px;"><em>I had known for some time that our successes were out of step. His work overshadowed mine for years, and so when my own triumphs finally arrived I let myself look away.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 40px;"><em>He was burnt out and I had made it. I had made it, as we say, not because but perhaps in spite of him - that long shadow of the sugar daddy.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 40px;"><em>I realised then that in the wake of the accident I had become his widow, above and beyond anything else.</em></p>
2. Mothering

There's a parallel story in <em>The Anniversary</em>, which gathers pace as events following the cruise unfold. We learn about J.B.'s childhood, her role as a sister, an aunty, and as a stepmother to Patrick's son from his first marriage. It adds another layer of oomph to an already compelling story.
<p style="padding-left: 40px;"><em>Every woman who does not have a sister wants one. Every sisterless woman imagines a kinship that fate has denied her.</em></p>
3. Women 'not behaving' as they 'should'

Remember when <a href="https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/why-didnt-she-cry-how-lindy-chamberlain-became-the-poster-child-for-life-shattering-gender-bias/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lindy Chamberlain didn't cry</a>? I wondered if that was on Bishop's mind when she created the character of J.B. From a plot point-of-view, it's a brilliant move because it makes J.B. less 'likeable' and possibly an unreliable narrator.
<p style="padding-left: 40px;"><em>There was nothing to equal the rage I felt when I realised he had taken our own story away from me.</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 40px;"><em>We couldn't display our feelings in our art and then refuse to talk about them, refuse to acknowledge them as real and not fictional. But what if the fictional was the trigger of all that then became real?</em></p>
<p style="padding-left: 40px;"><em>...I understood that in this moment of greatest triumph I was again - and perhaps always would be - overshadowed by Patrick, maybe now more than ever. Even in death he had the power to eclipse my own achievements.</em></p>
I'm not generally into suspense novels but, when I do read them, I want them to be like <em>The Anniversary</em> - thought-provoking, with motives that aren't clear-cut.

I received my copy of <em>The Anniversary </em>from the publisher, Grove Atlantic, via <a href="https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/276477" target="_blank" rel="noopener">NetGalley</a>, in exchange for an honest review.

4/5

I found this book was okay but did not love it. I found it a bit hard getting into. It was not like the usual thrillers I read, so I did struggle with it a little and found it hard to get into.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC by Stephanie Bishop. The Anniversary is about a marriage and the idea that you just may not know quite everything about your spouse. When a couple goes on a cruise, and the husband falls overboard, the wife is left alone and truths about her marriage, that she didn’t see beforehand, come to the surface. While this is the premise of the storyline, there is a lot left out of my review. The writing flows and I think you will find this book enjoyable if you like stories with a psychological undercurrent.

In The Anniversary we meet a woman novelist who is celebrating her wedding anniversary on a cruise, where an event triggers the truths about her past and her marriage.

The book is narrated in first person. And as the plot unfolded, the main character tended to divert to thoughts of her own or recallings of the past in long paragraphs, so the story does not have a comfortable flow. It's also worth noting that the text lacks speech marks.

I did not enjoy it like I thought I would when I requested it. It probably didn't help that I read it when a lot of things were going on in my life at the moment, and instead of distracting me, the book seemed dragging.

Thank you, NetGalley and Grove Atlantic, for this ARC!

Note for NetGalley and the publisher: the file is damaged. The screen froze every time I woke up my Kindle and the only way around was to restart the device. It also didn't save my progress properly.

An interesting plot but I did get bogged down with some of the descriptive writing style.
Many thanks to Grove Atlantic and to Netgalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

“The Anniversary” by Stephanie Bishop is a novel that delves deep into the complexities of relationships, the blurred lines between reality and fiction, and the intricate web of emotions that tie us to our past and our art. At its core, the book revolves around J.B. Blackwood, a successful novelist, and her husband Patrick, a renowned film director and cult figure. The couple embarks on a cruise to celebrate their wedding anniversary, but tragedy strikes when Patrick falls overboard during a storm, leaving J.B. alone to grapple with the truth about their marriage and the mysteries surrounding his disappearance. Bishop’s writing is exquisite, drawing readers into a narrative that blurs the lines between memory, perception, and storytelling. The novel is not a traditional thriller but rather a psychological exploration of a woman’s unraveling psyche. The first-person narrative offers a glimpse into J.B.’s mind as she pieces together the events leading up to Patrick’s fall and reflects on their complex relationship.

The portrayal of marriage, power dynamics, and the impact of success on a partnership is a central theme in the book. As J.B. navigates her memories and emotions, readers are presented with a layered and multi-dimensional view of the couple’s life together. The book raises questions about the sacrifices we make for our partners, the boundaries between personal and professional aspirations, and the inevitable changes that time brings to even the most intense relationships. However, “The Anniversary” may not be everyone’s cup of tea. The nonlinear narrative, frequent shifts in time, and the introspective nature of the protagonist’s thoughts can make the pacing feel slow at times. Some readers might find it frustrating to be kept in the dark about certain elements of the story or to grapple with an unreliable narrator.

While not a traditional thriller, “The Anniversary” is a thought-provoking and evocative exploration of human emotions, relationships, and the intricate ways our past shapes our present. Stephanie Bishop’s intricate prose and keen psychological insights make this novel a compelling read for those who appreciate a deep dive into the human psyche and the intricacies of love and loss.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for providing me this Advanced Readers Copy of The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop!

The Anniversary is the fourth novel by award-winning Australian author, Stephanie Bishop. After a decade and a half of writing, Lucie Blackwood is about to win a prestigious literary award. But, as she and her husband of fourteen years, Patrick Heller celebrate their anniversary with a cruise just before the award ceremony, tragedy strikes: Patrick, thoroughly drunk, falls overboard during a storm in Russian waters just north of Japan.

In the aftermath, numb with grief, she encounters quite a few people remarkably devoid of empathy, and one or two who care, before her agent rescues her. In quick succession she travels to New York City, London and Sydney.

Lucie, whose name the reader doesn’t learn until halfway through, might be an unreliable narrator: “…too often I doubt my own version of events. There are things I did not wholly remember, but which I am sure did happen – there is an outline of them in my head, but the content is missing. There are things I am sure I once remembered differently to how I recall them now.” Or maybe she’s just dishonest by omission early in her narrative.

Is her graphic description of sex with Patrick before his death calculated, meant to distract the investigating officer in Sapporo? For a freshly widowed woman, she certainly makes some strange choices around attending an awards night, a party, consenting to a phone interview, a TV appearance and several book promotion events, and her publicists seem more interested in book promotion than the welfare of their grieving author.

It’s difficult to find any appealing characters in this tale: Patrick seems to have been a controlling figure sculpting Lucie to his own purposes: “He seemed, to me, to have all the knowledge that I wanted for myself, that I needed. He knew what books I should read and what places I should visit, the films I should watch. He prided himself on giving me experiences, he took pleasure in this.”

The story inches along with numerous lengthy, often deeply analytical, introspective digressions that perhaps add mood or background but might frustrate the impatient reader wanting the promised “propulsive page-turner” of the blurb. For most of the book, the only mysteries the reader will really want solved are the disappearance of Lucie’s mother, only vaguely hinted at, and what terrible thing Patrick said to Lucie before he went overboard, finally revealed to patient readers at the 85% mark.

Bishop does give the reader some beautiful prose, but chooses to omit quote marks for speech, an increasingly popular trend that many readers find irritating for the ambiguity it causes. A psychological thriller this is not, but it may appeal to those who enjoy high-brow literary fiction and, with its emphatic author perspective, to authors. Plenty of frills but no thrills.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Grove Atlantic.

The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop
Publisher Grove Atlantic, Grove Press, Black Cat
Release Date July 18, 2023

Characters: 3/5
Plot: 3/5
Pace: 3/5
Overall Enjoyment: 3/4


At first, I started to enjoy the writings and how the author was using a first person narrative to tell the story. However as time went on, it really became something that was incomprehensible. It is a very overly descriptive fiction turned non fiction turned fiction again. I was completely confused for awhile. I still do not really know if she pushed her husband off of the cruise ship or during his drunkenness, he fell. The story was obliterated while having so many different intellectual views, for me anyway. There were times I was sucked in to the story once I figured out the writing style but just as soon as I became used to it, it seemed to change. I would not classify this as a thriller at all.

3 stars

Thank you to NetGalley as well as the author and publisher for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my unbiased and honest review.

This is a book I should have skipped. It's not a thriller. It's an overwrought, overly descriptive literary-style fiction novel.

No quotation marks. Excessive description of things that have no bearing on the thin plot.

At the beginning, I was really interested. A couple embarks on a cruise and he falls overboard--or was he pushed? But from there it just jumps around in time so we learn about how they got together and then jumps forward and backward and by the time I got to the end I felt like I, not Lucie, should have won a prize for getting through this exhausting book.

If you like introspection and meanderingly descriptive prose, you might like it. Not for me at all.

The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop was a very sad story mostly told in first person by the protagonist, who was his wife and had been accused of his murder. They were on a vacation, a cruise. They would end up in Japan and then fly to New York. They enjoyed much of it but they argued. He was drunk. It was on the deck. Did he fall or did she push him? I never really knew. She was pregnant after years of marriage, that was certain. Was she imagining it or was it real? What about their marriage. Was that real? I never knew. Very strange book.

I was invited to read a free e-ARC of The Anniversary by Grove Atlantic, through Netgalley. All thoughts and opinions are mine. #Netgalley #GroveAtlantic #StephanieBishop #TheAnniversary

It rounded up to 3.5 stars...

I am so thankful to Tantor Audio, a division of Recorded Books media, Stephanie Bishop, NetGalley, and Libro.fm for granting me advanced audiobook access to this twisty thriller before it hits shelves on July 18, 2023.

Our lead character is having some relationship issues with her husband and her stepson. As a means to resolve these issues, the couple goes on a cruise, exploring the Japanese coastal regions as soaking up on their reprieve. When her husband goes missing and is found dead, she doesn't know what to think and then is thrown back into her literary publishing world, expected to assume the normal.

Years down the line, however, she is viewed negatively with suspicion for likely having something to do with her husband's demise, which opens up a whole jar of worms into her private intimate life that she wished to remain sealed.

In Stephanie Bishop's THE ANNIVERSARY, the ultimate anniversary dream voyage goes horribly wrong when renowned literary luminary husband Patrick goes overboard and his wife JB, a rising literary star is left alone with her memories, questions, and explanations of what went wrong and why, for her now solitary sail as well as for the entire life they made and shared with one another. Their complicated marriage is suddenly under intense scrutiny, from JB as well as all the others figuring out what really happened on that voyage. Once I got used to the unusual lack of punctuation to indicate speech, I was captivated by what a creative person can do with her real life and what she makes up for her fiction. I received a copy of this novel and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

The Anniversary by Stephanie Bishop is a very unusual but intriguing novel.

The writing style takes a little while to become accustomed to as it is a type of stream of consciousness where there a very very long sentences that follow the thoughts, feelings and actions of the protagonist, novelist J. B. Blackwood, but also interspersed with short, sharp words and sentences which pop up to interrupt the flow. There is only one point of view and at times J.B.’s thoughts don’t follow a logical pattern but jump all over the place - which, to be honest is often how the brain (well mine anyway) can work. Given this writing style it was at times difficult to pick up what was actually happening but once I became used to I felt like I was being taken for a ride inside J.B.’s mind. Interesting strategy for the unfolding of the story.

Having worked out the writing style the story slowly unfolds and we find J.B off on a cruise for their wedding anniversary. J.B. met Patrick, twenty years older than her, when he was her lecturer but also a film director and producer. Their relationship appeared to be one of collaboration and mutual support but this seemed to change as J.B. became a successful novelist.

The publisher’s blurb is an excellent introduction:

“Novelist J.B. Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Her former professor, film director, and cult figure, Patrick is much older than J.B.. When they met, he seemed somehow ageless, as all gods appear in the eyes of those who worship them. But now his success is starting to wane and J.B. is on the cusp of winning a major literary prize. Her art has been forever overseen by him, now it may overshadow his.
For days they sail in the sun, nothing but dark water all around them. Then a storm hits and Patrick falls from the ship. J.B. is left alone, as the search for what happened to Patrick – and the truth about their marriage – begins.”

An interesting exploration of relationships - not just between student and teachers, but mother and daughters and siblings with the issue of perspective being devolved into, particularly as we are only given one perspective.

How a novelist relates to their characters and story is also explored as is that of viewing life as a cinematic experience. A lot to think about there!

An interesting novel - not an easy read but one that left me with a lot of issues to think about.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from Grove Atlantic via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

#TheAnniversary #NetGalley

Patrick was the important one when JB married him but now she's been nominated for a literary prize. Their cruise turns disastrous when Patrick goes overboard, prompting JB to at long last reflect on their relationship. She, btw, continues along to the various events surrounding her achievement-would Patrick have done the same? This is an odd book in some ways because it blends genres and keeps you guessing if you have patience to read through all of JB's thoughts. Part of the plot- the younger wife who has been subjugated and then comes into her own- might seem familiar but Bishop puts a fresh spin on it. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. Difficult to review without spoilers but a good read.

The Anniversary is intriguing, complex and overwhelming.

I'll start with overwhelming. The writing style took me ages to get into as I needed to revise my expectations (more centred around the mystery and circumstances that led to Patrick (J.B's husband) disappearing. For the first 50%, I felt like a headless chook trying to decipher if it was J.B. or Lucie (the protagonist's personal name), as the lines between fiction and non-fiction are blurred. However, the emotional response of numbness, wanting to escape and dissociativeness shone through.

When I hit the 60% mark, the book had my full attention as it was intriguing and complex. However, I've realised that this book is targeted at readers who appreciate the art of writing and love unreliable narration. I would advise readers to adjust their expectations as this story is about a woman spiralling about her choices and decisions before the anniversary cruise. In conclusion, it is a well-written psychological thriller with a hit-and-miss in keeping the readers wholly engaged.

Thank you, NetGalley & Grove Atlantic, for providing this e-ARC. This honest review is left voluntarily.