Book Review – We’ll Meet Again by Mary Higgins Clark

Published by: Pocket Books
Publication Date: First published April 26, 1999
Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Mystery
369 pages
Format: Paperback
Source: Purchased
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Buy: Amazon, Book Depository, iBooks, Kobo
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Sypnosis:

Dr. Gary Lasch, prominent Greenwich, Connecticut doctor and founder of the HMO Remington Health Management, is found dead in his home, his skull crushed by a blow with a heavy bronze sculpture, and his wife, Molly, in bed covered with his blood. It was the Lasch’s housekeeper, Edna Barry, who made the grisly discovery the morning after Molly’s unexpectedly early return from Cape Cod, where she had gone to seclude herself upon learning of her husband’s infidelity. As the evidence against Molly grows, her lawyer plea-bargains a manslaughter charge to avoid a murder conviction.

Released from prison nearly six years later, Molly reasserts her innocence to reporters, among them an old school friend, Fran Simmons, an investigative reporter and anchor for a true-crime show. Molly convinces Fran to research and produce a program on her husband’s death, and as hidden aspects of Gary Lash’s life and the affairs of Remington Health Management come to light, Fran herself becomes a target for murder.

Review:

When I really love a book, I would either end up speechless or I talk nonstop about it. For this story, I’m not sure where I am, I guess I’m in between? We’ll Meet Again by Mary Higgins Clark, I believe is one of her best books so far.

Her other book, A Stranger is Watching was a good one but didn’t totally stood up for me. I love to give her another chance to prove that she’s still the Queen of Suspense that made me fall in love reading English books in the first place, so I decided to settle for this one since the other paperback that I haven’t read yet is still with my mom. She’s a big fan too, haha, like mother like daughter I guess.

This story was about Molly Lasch who was the prime suspect of the death of her husband, Dr. Gary Lasch. Because of the overwhelming evidence pointing at her, her lawyer Philip Matthew convinced her to plea-bargain to avoid murder conviction. She was supposed to be on jail for 10 years but was given a parole after 5 and a half years in prison. After getting out from the prison, she then asked her high school classmate, Fran, who’s an investigative reporter to work on with her case and found out what really happened that night when her husband was murdered in exchange of her full cooperation.

The idea of the story was not new to me, I’ve read a story with somewhat the same idea as this one which was the My Gal Sunday. What’s different is that, this is quite a long read, while the latter is just a short one.

When I started this story, I have to say that it immediately caught my attention. I was quite surprised because it was not what I experienced from the previous book that I’ve read from hers. The story started with a prologue containing what happened almost six years ago. If you ask me, I’m not really convinced that she killed her husband. Because if she did, I’m sure this story will never happen in the first place. Besides, I’ve read almost all her books so I already had an idea. As I’ve said above, this isn’t my first time reading a story where the person they think was the killer turns out to be innocent.

As early as the prologue, I already had a name as my guess for the possible culprit. I’ve stick with it until I reached the part where another characters were introduced and some scenes and lines we’re executed. Dang! I thought I had it all figured out but MHC proved me wrong. I don’t think I have a future being an investigator even just in books lol.

I think I have to refrain mentioning some scenes or characters that caught my attention and some that pushed my buttons for I might dropped a spoiler. And I guess that’s for the best because until now, I’m still groping in the dark what is the perfect thing to write how I loved this story. It really, like literally made me look like a crazy person. I’ve been shouting and screaming because of the excitement while once in a while fuming because of some stupid characters that pushed me to the limit. Well, my dog was the witness of my temporary insanity lol and I guess he’s kind of used to that already since he just looked at me lazily haha.

The idea of this story might not be foreign to me but the scenes, the twist and turns and how MHC connects all the characters together was just pure genius. I don’t know about the others, but I didn’t find any flaws in this story. All we’re perfectly executed and the scenes holds up together. Unless you consider the part where no one explained why Gary and his friends were interested with their then college professor’s experiment.

All the characters we’re surprisingly perfect and very convincing. The number of characters we’re quite a lot but surprisingly, I didn’t feel overwhelmed with their numbers. As a matter of fact, I find it easy to keep track all of them. Once in a while I forgot their first name, but I can still knows who’s who from who. This story really made me feel a lot of emotions. I was doubtful, was sad, was angry, was in the verge of falling off my seat because of the suspense, was happy, thankful and ofcourse almost giggling because sometimes, I just find Philip so sweet to Molly. Yep, I’m a total sucker that I even put malice to Philip’s concern to Molly. But wollah, I’m right. He’s in love with her. Haha!

Molly was so stressed out and was suicidal after her second arrest because of “killing” her husband’s mistress. But I am really happy because Fran was there. Her dedication to know the truth about what really happened and help Molly was just amazing. I guess almost all the readers will agree that Fran was the real star in this story.

For the suspect, we’ll I’m not totally wrong with my guess, he may not be the main bad guy, but I still did good haha. So, overall, I’m not totally a sore loser. And the revelation of the real bad guys was shocking. I really didn’t expect that. As an advice, never be fooled by the unsuspecting character haha.

The ending was fine, I don’t hate it but I don’t love it. But what’s good about it is that we have something to look forward to, especially to Molly and Philip’s “future” relationship. It’s just too bad because there’s quite a lot of characters that ended up dead in this story

We’ll Meet Again will absolutely make you guess ’till the end. The mystery, suspense and the revelation will blow your mind away. If you want to experience those, then read this story. It will never disappoint.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Reading this book contributed to the following challenges: