MY HUSBAND’S WIFE is a difficult book to review because I changed my mind about it so many times. I was bored at first, then it was absorbing, then everything was tied up too neatly.

But one really great thing to say about this story is that you will change your mind over and over about who is good and who is bad. This is what will keep you reading to the end.

First Carla is a nine-year-old and Lily is in her 20s, a newlywed. You will feel sorry for Carla because she is bullied in school. Then you will see how she manipulates the adults around her. In that, she is much like her mother.

Next is Lily the lawyer, who is married to Ed and cannot quite believe how she got so lucky. She is new to the law and allows herself to be taken in by (and taken with) her client, a prisoner arrested for murder.

Carla and her mother live in the same apartment building as Lily and Ed. Every Sunday Carla‘s mother claims to have to go to work when she leaves Carla with Lily and Ed.

Cut to about 12 years later. Carla and her mother have been living in Italy, but Carla has returned to England. She has a plan to find Lily and Ed and hit them up for money. At this point, the book didn’t bore me anymore.

So the lives of four characters, Carla, Lily, Ed, and Lily’s client, who never goes away, are forever intertwined. And the reader won’t be able to decide whether each of them is good or bad as evidence keeps mounting.

I am in a similar dilemma about the book. That is, for the most part, I guess, it’s good but not great.