‘The First Husband’ by Elisabeth Carpenter

Published by Bookouture,
31 January 2025.
ISBN: 978-1-83525-785-2 (PB)

Eight years ago Leah’s husband Callum disappeared without trace during a weekend which was meant to celebrate her thirtieth birthday. A year ago Callum was declared legally dead, and now almost the same group of people has gathered in the same place for another celebration: her wedding to Matt, her first husband’s best friend: her brother Jake and his wife Katherine; Matt’s parents Olivia and Greg; her dad, and three-year-old Noah, her son with Matt whom she adores. Everything is progressing as it should – then a note arrives. It says I can’t wait to see you. I’ve missed you so much. All my love, Callum.

And that’s only the beginning.

A succession of cards, e-mails and screenshots containing thinly veiled threats leaves Leah disturbed, distressed and confused. What is going on? Is someone setting out to sabotage her big day? If so, who hates her that much? Should the wedding go ahead, or is it too dangerous? And most important of all, is Callum alive after all, and if he is, how has he stayed under the radar for eight years, and why has he chosen to come back now?

Elisabeth Carpenter knows how to create atmospheric settings and characters who feel real. The beautiful lakeside house should form a calm, inviting backcloth to a happy weekend, but from the start there’s a hint of unease, with brooding woods and half-derelict buildings nearby. The lake itself was named as the scene – and cause – of Callum’s death, though his body has never been found.

Leah is normally calm and capable but doubts and vulnerabilities soon begin to overwhelm her. Her husband-to-be Matt is well-adjusted and down-to-earth despite his family’s wealth, in contrast to Callum, who is revealed through flashbacks to the first weekend to be volatile and unpredictable, and less successful as he thinks he deserves to be. With the possible exception of Leah’s unassuming father and Noah, all the characters are hiding secrets or doubts related to that first fateful weekend, and cracks appear in more than one relationship as the situation escalates.  

Question follows question in the kind of book that makes you itch to get back to it every time you’re interrupted. All are answered in the end, but not before lives are endangered and the whole weekend is thrown into chaos. It all hinges on one person: Callum. What really happened eight years ago? Was Matt and Leah’s happy-ever-after doomed from the outset? Carpenter has proved in the course of seven previous books that she knows how to wind up the tension almost to breaking point, and this time she goes the extra mile.  
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Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Elisabeth Carpenter lives in Preston with her family. She completed a BA in English Literature and Language with the Open University in 2008. Elisabeth was awarded a Northern Writers’ New Fiction award and was longlisted for Yeovil Literary Prize (2015 and 2016) and the MsLexia Women’s Novel award (2015). She loves living in the north of England and sets most of her stories in the area, including the novel she is writing at the moment. She currently works as a bookkeeper. 

https://elisabethcarpenter.co.uk    

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.