The main character who loves her husband and family and thinks they have no secrets. She also comes across a touch naive in the way she trusts everyone around her.

Leah is VERY trusting and leaves for a work trip immediately. She doesn’t even fill out any paperwork and pays Valerie in cash. Leah takes a picture of Valerie and Emma before she gets in her cab, but Valerie intentionally moves, blurring herself in the picture. OH ALSO, LEAH FORGOT HER DAUGHTERS BIRTHDAY. Laura Marshall knows how to write an engaging first chapter. I’ve read all of her novels, and I loved her latest, My Husband’s Killer. We meet Liz, whose husband, Andrew, has recently been killed in a tragic accident, while they were on holiday in Italy with friends. But Liz is left even more bereft, when she finds evidence that her husband may have been having an affair on the day of his funeral. It puts Liz in an impossible situation. How can she mourn Andrew now, when all she can think of is the idea of Andrew cheating on her? Will she ever find out what was going on now that he’s dead?The story focuses on a tight-knit group of friends who’ve known each other since university, and who have headed to Italy to celebrate the birthday of one of their partners. The dynamics between them are all off, primarily because of the break-up of one relationship and the hidden secrets that have been kept. This book felt like friendship school drama poured and moulded into the real life drama mixed with friend holiday drama. This lowkey feels like the typical holiday drama meets death kinda book. A silence descends in which they regard me anxiously. They’ll put it down to grief, but I know I’m being short with them and until this morning I would have said they don’t deserve it. Along with Poppy, these women dropped everything to support me today, and over these last terrible three months. They came to the registrar with me when, having finally received confirmation of presumption of death, I went to register Andrew’s death, unable to deal with it alone. They sat with me at the meeting with the vicar, helping me plan the service, knowing what I wanted without having to ask. They set up the projector for the montage of photos of Andrew I spent hours putting together as I wept uncontrollably at his innocent childhood face. But one of them has ruined everything.

There were tears earlier, of course, but now there is laughter and shared reminiscences and stories. The conversation around the kitchen table ebbs and flows like the tide that washed Andrew away. I’m not saying much, but my friends understand. They give space to my grief, allow me to just be, present but apart from them. The very best of friends. They think they know everything about me, but they don’t. None of them would guess in a million years what’s going on inside my head, eating away at me – chewing me up and spitting me out. And that’s OK. Just because you didn’t know every single little thing about Andrew doesn’t invalidate your relationship with him, doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.’We finish with a hymn to which I hardly bother to mouth along having let the vicar choose it, and a final prayer committing Andrew’s body, wherever it may be, to a God he had little belief in. Originally I had mooted a non-religious ceremony but Andrew’s parents had objected, and as I didn’t have any strong feelings either way a church service seemed the right thing to do. I smell patchouli and herbal shampoo and before I know it, my best and oldest friend Poppy has enveloped me in a massive hug. Director Peter Andrikidis' experience in making television is evident in this Australian made-for-TV movie based on a real life crime story, but this isn't a good thing, since it plays like an episode of a police series. Subtlety isn't much in evidence here, and because of this bias, our empathy naturally goes to the guilty person whom we are supposed to want caught. There are lots of novels around at the moment that centre around friends who go on holiday together, I really enjoy them and this one is one of the best that I've read in a long while. Despite the fairly large cast of characters, which does take some sorting out at the beginning, it's a novel filled with suspense, intrigue and mystery. Todd is an an improbably good-looking, rich American with whom it transpired she’d been having an affair for some time, a betrayal of his best friend that Andrew – and I, if I’m honest - have struggled to come to terms with.