4.3
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22,717 ratings
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER | GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK
“Gripping, heartbreaking and impossible to put down.”—Laura Dave
“A dazzling supernova of a book, it picks you up on line one and doesn't let you go until the very end.” —Lisa Jewell
From the New York Times bestselling author of Ghosted comes a love story wrapped in a mystery: an up-all-night page-turner with a dark secret at its core
Emma loves her husband Leo and their young daughter Ruby: she’d do anything for them. But almost everything she's told them about herself is a lie.
And she might just have got away with it, if it weren’t for her husband’s job. Leo is an obituary writer; Emma a well-known marine biologist. When she suffers a serious illness, Leo copes by doing what he knows best – researching and writing about his wife’s life. But as he starts to unravel the truth, he discovers the woman he loves doesn’t really exist. Even her name isn’t real.
When the very darkest moments of Emma’s past finally emerge, she must somehow prove to Leo that she really is the woman he always thought she was . . .
But first, she must tell him about the other love of her life.
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ISBN-10
0593297024
ISBN-13
978-0593297025
Print length
432 pages
Language
English
Publisher
Penguin Books
Publication date
February 05, 2024
Dimensions
4.19 x 1.07 x 7.49 inches
Item weight
7.8 ounces
When we have experienced more loss than is bearable, she says, we hold on to everything.
Highlighted by 1,381 Kindle readers
About how, as we approach the end of our life, we find ourselves turning toward the things and people that are most meaningful to us so that we may face death with equanimity and courage.
Highlighted by 684 Kindle readers
I don’t know anything, other than that it’s only when something’s damaged beyond repair that we realize how beautiful it was.
Highlighted by 625 Kindle readers
ASIN :
B098J337VY
File size :
3970 KB
Text-to-speech :
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Supported
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Enabled
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Enabled
Praise for The Love of My Life:
“Let’s put it this way, if it weren’t for work I would have been able to finish this book in a day.” —Lama Hasan, ABC News
“Combining the gripping pace of a psychological thriller with the tenderness and sorrow of a love story gone wrong, this one’s a winner.” —People, Book of the Week
“The Love of My Life is a dazzling supernova of a book, it picks you up on line one and doesn't let you go until the very end. Each chapter is filled with heart-breaking twists and revelations, and it is brimming with human warmth and intelligence.” —Lisa Jewell, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Night She Disappeared
“Readers won’t be able to stop turning the pages to see how the past and present inevitably collide in Rosie Walsh’s latest. The Love of My Life is a poignant love story, a propulsive mystery and a cautionary tale about the secrets we keep. I couldn’t put it down.“ —Greer Hendricks, New York Times bestselling author of You Are Not Alone
“Walsh’s hugely compelling The Love of My Life instantly pulls you deep into the interior of a marriage. Part thriller, part mystery, part heart-wrenching love story, this is a treasure for book clubs everywhere.” —Ashley Audrain, New York Times bestselling author of The Push
“Rosie Walsh’s The Love of My Life is my favorite kind of thriller—gripping, heartbreaking and impossible to put down.” —Laura Dave, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Last Thing He Told Me
“A bruising and beautiful mystery that kept me guessing till the very end, The Love of My Life delivers on every level. I’m a huge fan of Rosie Walsh.” —Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author of We Begin At The End
“How do we really build a new life? About the mystery of identity and the sometimes cost of love, Walsh’s latest is a stunner.” —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of and With or Without You
“The Love of My Life is an extraordinary novel. Rosie Walsh combines the emotional punch of the best of romance with the page-turning twists of the most masterful thrillers. I was torn between pausing to weep, and ploughing on to solve the mysteries.” —Clare Pooley, New York Times bestselling author of The Authenticity Project
“Walsh masterfully shows both [protagonists’] points of view while maintaining an intoxicating air of mystery…a propulsive thriller with heart that will keep readers guessing.” —Kirkus, starred review
“[A] heartbreaking thriller…[that] explores the complexity of secrets in marriages…Walsh cleverly integrates twists that not even jaded readers will be able to predict…that builds to an emotionally raw yet satisfying conclusion. Walsh is a writer to watch.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“What do you do when you find out everything your wife ever told you about herself is a lie? Allow Rosie Walsh's love story slash mystery, The Love of My Life, to explain.” —Marie Claire
“Perfect for your next book club, Rosie Walsh’s The Love of My Life is a love story meets thriller about the complexities of deceit within marriage.” —Parade
“I am a huge fan of Rosie Walsh's writing. The Love of My Life is heart-wrenching, beautiful and thought-provoking; it made me cry, smile and hug my own loved ones a little tighter.” —Beth O'Leary, international bestselling author of The Flatshare
“Perfection. Every word. Every moment. Every emotion. Brave, heart-breaking, and hopeful. A breathtaking story.” —Lucy Clarke, bestselling author of One of the Girls
“Brilliantly plotted and beautifully written, what really elevates Rosie Walsh's book above the competition is the characters. Contradictory, flawed and entirely human, I loved and rooted for them like real people.” —Kate Riordan, author of The Heatwave
“Wow, this book! With The Love of My Life Rosie Walsh has achieved a very rare thing: a totally heart-rending love story that is also a page-turning thriller - how does she do it?!?! Addictive, moving, totally unputdownable. It really is superb and has Netflix series written all over it.” —Katy Regan, author of How To Find Your Way Home
Praise for Ghosted:
“I absolutely loved this book and didn’t want it to end.” —Liane Moriarty, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Little Lies
“Riveting.” —Cosmopolitan
“Walsh has a good ear for dialogue, and the mystery behind Eddie’s disappearance is a particularly satisfying one.” —The New York Times Book Review
“A gripping and surprising romantic suspense story. . . . You won't want to put it down.” —NPR
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One
Leo
Her eyelashes are often wet when she wakes, as if she's been swimming in a sea of sad dreams. "It's just some sleep-related thing," she's always said. "I never have nightmares." After a fathomless yawn she'll wipe her eyes and slip out of bed to check Ruby is alive and breathing. It's a habit she's been unable to break, even though Ruby's three.
"Leo!" she'll say, when she gets back. "Wake up! Kiss me!"
Moments will pass, as I slide into day from the slow-moving depths. Dawn will spread from the east in amber shadows and we will burrow in close to each other, Emma talking almost nonstop-although from time to time she will pause, midstream, to kiss me. At 6:45 we will check Wikideaths for overnight passings, then at 7:00 she will break wind, blaming the sound on a moped out in the road.
I can't remember how far into our relationship it was when she started doing this: not far enough, probably. But she would have known that I was on board, by then, that I was no more likely to swim back to the shore than I was to grow wings and fly there.
If our daughter hasnÕt climbed into our bed by that time, we climb into hers. Her room is sweet and hot, and our early-morning conversations about Duck are among the happiest moments my heart knows. Duck, whom she clutches tightly to herself all night, is credited with incredible nocturnal adventures.
Normally I'll dress Ruby while Emma "goes down to make breakfast," although most days she'll get sidetracked by marine data collected overnight in her lab, and it's Ruby and me who'll sort out the food. My wife was forty minutes late for our wedding because she'd stopped to photograph the tidal strandlines at Restronguet Creek in her wedding dress. Nobody, except the registrar, was surprised.
Emma's an intertidal ecologist, which means she studies the places and creatures that are submerged at high tide and exposed at low. The most miraculous and exciting ecosystem on earth, she says: she's been rockpooling since she was a young girl; it's in her blood. Her main research interest is crabs, but I believe most crustaceans are fair game. Right now she's got a bunch of little guys called Hemigrapsus takanoi in special sea-water tanks at work. I know they're an invasive species and that she's looking at some specific morphology she's been trying to pin down for years, but that's as much as I'm able to understand. Less than a third of the words biologists use can be understood by the average human; getting trapped in a group of them at a party is a nightmare.
Emma is singing to John Keats when Ruby and I arrive in the kitchen this morning, the sun jagging across the worktops and our cereal hardening in bowls. Her laptop, which displays a page of mind-boggling words and squiggles, plays a track called ÒKillermuffin.Ó When we rescued John Keats from the dog shelter they told us that jungle at a low volume soothed his nerves, and so it has become the soundtrack to our lives. IÕm used to it now, but it took a while.
I stand in the doorway with Ruby perched on my hip, watching my wife singing tunelessly to the dog. In spite of a bunch of musicians in Emma's ancestry she is incapable of singing even "Happy Birthday" in tune, but this has never stopped her. It's one of many things I love about my wife.
She catches sight of us and dances over, still singing appallingly. "My favorites!" she says, kissing us both and extracting Ruby from my arms. She whirls off with our daughter and the dreadful singing gets louder.
Ruby knows Mummy's been ill; she has seen her lose her hair thanks to the special medicine she gets at hospital, but she thinks Emma's better now. The truth of the matter is, we don't know. Emma had her post-treatment PET scan yesterday and an appointment to discuss the results has been booked for next week. We are hopeful, we are frightened. Neither of us is sleeping well.
After a brief stint dancing with her mother, Duck whirling around their heads, Ruby wriggles off to take care of some urgent business.
"Come back!" Emma cries. "I want to cuddle you!"
"I'm too busy," Ruby says, regretfully. Then: "Hi," she whispers, to the plant she's looking after for nursery. "I'm going to give you a drink."
"Anything?" I ask, nodding at the computer. Emma presented a BBC wildlife series a few years back and continues to receive messages from weird men, even though she hasn't been on telly since. But her series was repeated recently, and as a result the messages have increased. Normally, we laugh at them, but last night she admitted she's had some more disturbing ones of late.
"A couple more. One tame, one less so. But I've blocked him."
I watch her carefully as she fills our water glasses, but she doesn't seem bothered. I think it's fair to say I mind about these messages a lot more than she does. I've tried to get her to shut down her public Facebook page, but she won't. People apparently still post about wildlife they've been tracking, and she's not willing to close the resource down "simply because of a few lonely men."
I hope they are just lonely.
"I love your piece on Kenneth Delwych," Emma tells me, keeping an eye on Ruby, who's climbing up to the sink with her watering can. My newspaper is on the table with the obituaries page open.
I go over to John Keats and fold one of his flappy silken ears around my finger, waiting for the but. The dog smells of biscuits and singed fur after a recent encounter with the iron.
"But?" I prompt.
She stops, caught out. "No but."
"Oh, Emma. Come off it."
After a moment, she laughs. "Fine. I do love it, but the female priest is the real showstopper. Hey, Ruby, that's enough water."
John Keats sighs deeply as I lean over to study my articles. Kenneth Delwych, a peer famed for the legendary orgies he hosted at his Sussex vineyard, is sharing the obituaries page with a Bomber Command navigator and a female priest who had a heart attack during a wedding ceremony last weekend. "You're at your best when you're completely deadpan," Emma says. She puts bread in the toaster. "That actor last week-the Scottish one, what was his name? Ruby, please don't drown the thing . . ."
"David Baillie?"
"David Baillie. Yes. Perfection."
I reread my Kenneth Delwych piece while Emma deals with the inevitable overflow of water and soil from Ruby's plant. She's right, of course. The female priest, with her far shorter obit, reads better.
Unfortunately, Emma's often right. My editor, who, I suspect, is in love with my wife, often jokes that he'd sack me and hire her if she ever decided to quit marine biology. I actually find this quite offensive, because unless he's secretly read her scientific articles, he has only one piece she wrote for the Huffington Post to go on.
Emma is a research fellow at the Marine Biological Association in Plymouth, which takes up two days of her week, then she comes back to us in London to teach estuarine conservation at UCL. She is an excellent writer, with instincts frequently better than mine, and she really does enjoy cruising Wikideaths, but this has more to do with her love of a good story than any interest in stealing my job.
Ruby and John Keats go out into the garden, where the sun steals through gaps in next door's sycamore, spotting our tiny lawn with gold. Smells of an early city summer roll through the door: still-glossy grass, honeysuckle, heating tarmac.
I try to rehydrate our cereal, while outside the dog runs around our pond, barking. It's alive with baby frogs at the moment, which he seems to find unacceptable. "John Keats, will you be quiet?" Emma asks, from the doorway. The dog takes no notice. "We have neighbors."
"JOHN!" Ruby yells. "WE HAVE NEIGHBORS!"
"Shhh, Ruby . . ."
I find some spoons and take our breakfast out to the garden.
"Sorry," Emma says, holding the door open for me. "Me and my unsolicited opinions on your work. It must be annoying."
"It is." We sit at the garden table, still bobbled with dew. "But you're mostly polite. The main problem is that you're often right."
She smiles. "I think you're a brilliant writer, Leo. I read your obits before I even open my work e-mails in the morning."
"Hmmm." I keep an eye on Ruby, who's just a bit too close to the pond.
"I do! Your writing is one of your sexiest assets."
"Oh, Emma, seriously, stop it."
Emma has a spoonful of cereal. "Actually, I'm not joking. You're the best writer on that desk. Period."
Embarrassingly, I can't stop myself from beaming. "Thank you," I say, eventually, because I know she means it. "But you're still annoying."
She sighs. "Oh, I know."
"For a whole host of reasons," I add, and she can't help laughing. "You have far too many opinions on far too many things."
She slips her hand across the table and squeezes my thumb, and tells me I am her favorite, and I find myself laughing, too-and that is our rhythm. That is us. We have been married seven years; together nearly ten, and I know every part of her.
I think it was Kennedy who said we are tied to the ocean-that when we return to it, for sport or leisure or somesuch, we are returning to the place from whence we came. ThatÕs how I feel about us. To be near to my wife, to Emma, is to return to source.
So when I learn, in the days following this morning-this innocent, commonplace morning, with dogs and frogs and coffee and dead priests-that I know nothing of this woman, it will break me.
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Rosie Walsh
Rosie Walsh is the internationally bestselling author of two novels, the global smash hit THE MAN WHO DIDN’T CALL, and - new for 2022 - THE LOVE OF MY LIFE, a heart-wrenching, keep-you-up-all-night emotional thriller, which was an instant New York Times bestseller and stayed in the German top ten for several weeks.
Rosie Walsh lives on a medieval farm in Devon, UK, with her partner and two young children, after years living and travelling all over the world as a documentary producer and writer.
The Man Who Didn’t Call (UK) / Ghosted (US) was her first book under her own name, and was published around the world in 2018, going on to be a multimillion bestseller.
Prior to writing under her own name she wrote four romantic comedies under the pseudonym Lucy Robinson. When she isn’t parenting or writing, Rosie can be found walking on Dartmoor, growing vegetables and throwing raves for adults and children in leaking barns.
Author photos © Anna Pumer Photography / Verity Rivers
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Customer reviews
4.3 out of 5
22,717 global ratings
Cindylouwho
5
Beautifully Crafted and Heartfelt
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2024
Verified Purchase
Love the writer’s style, the tenderness, compassion, and humor of a gripping and engaging story. Sprinkled with humor and horror. Enjoyed every minute of this book.
2 people found this helpful
Ella Frances
5
Definitely a page turner!
Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2024
Verified Purchase
I thought this was a beautifully constructed novel The main characters were interesting, well developed and believable. The story kept me completely enthralled and I didn't guess all the twists and turns of the plot so there were numerous surprises.
This was an excellent read.
7 people found this helpful
Michele
5
The large print is wonderful for me.
Reviewed in the United States on June 25, 2024
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The book itself is very good, but it’s very very heavy. It’s hard for me to hold.
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