The Best Way to Bury Your Husband by Alexia Casale Published by Penguin on March 19, 2024
Genres: Fiction / Humorous / Black Humor, Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense, Fiction / Women
Pages: 400
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 9780593654606A dark comedy about four women coming together to heal the damage their husbands have done––and hide their bodies once they’ve killed them.
When Sally kills her husband with a cast-iron skillet, she’s more fearful of losing her kids than of disposing of a fresh corpse. That just wouldn’t be fair—not after twenty years of marriage to a truly terrible man. But Sally isn’t the only woman in town reaching the brink. Soon, Sally finds herself leading an extremely unusual self-help group, and among them there are four bodies to hide. Can they all figure out the perfect way to bury their husbands . . . and get away with it?
First to join is former nurse, Ruth, who met her husband as a single mom. Now her son is grown and her husband’s violence builds by the day until an attack on the stairs leads to a fatal accident—for him. A few doors down, Samira’s last straw comes when she discovers her husband is planning a campaign of violence against her eldest daughter, who has just come out. Janey, Sally’s best friend, has just had her first child at forty-two. Sleep-deprived Janey needs a hero to slay the monster in the fairy tales she whispers to her daughter each night . . . and as her husband’s violence escalates, it might just be her.
Together, fueled by righteous anger but tempered by a moral core, the four women must help each other work out a plan to get rid of their husbands for good. Along the way, Sally, Ruth, Samira and Janey rediscover old joys and embark on new passions in work, education, and life. Friendship and laughter really are the best medicine—and so is getting away with murder.
I really enjoyed the book up to the ending. It was filled with enjoyable dark humor and a great message. But I would’ve liked to have a bit more closure in the novel.
I loved how all the women came together to help each other. Was it a little outlandish? Yes, of course, you’ll definitely have to suspend your disbelief with the whole idea that these four women randomly find each other after killing their husbands (and the author even acknowledges it in the note at the end). It was lovely that they didn’t just band together for this but became life-long friends, as well as never shaming the others for staying in these relationships.
On the outside, it’s so easy to wonder why women stay in abusive relationships and the fact remains that abusers know how to find prey. Plus, they don’t lead with the abuse; it’s subtle and gradual. One of the women had what seemed like a good relationship until they had a baby and that’s when all the problems started. It’s the moments were others are present and say nothing that was most infuriating. With Susan, the narrator of the story, her and her husband have a party at their house for his work colleagues. There’s a moment where he slaps her across the face in front of everyone. But nobody says anything to the cops or talks to Susan about getting help. People in abusive relationships don’t choose to stay, the fact remains that they’ve been so beaten down they don’t know how to leave. There’s also the fact that the “most dangerous time for a survivor is when they leave the abusive partner; 75% of domestic violence related homicides occur upon separation and there is a 75% increase of violence upon separation for at least two years” (Barriers to Leaving an Abusive Relationship).
Barring the important message of the book, the story itself left something to be desired. Spoilers ahead! The whole twist of Edwina, Susan’s across the street neighbor, having killed her husband was easy to spot early on. It did make for hilarious moments of her knowing what they were doing and the group trying to hide it all. In the end, the group of women finish burying their husbands and the police are looking at other avenues for why the husbands are gone. Everything’s going well and they’re celebrating being free of these abusive men when Edwina comes in with one of the husband’s arms. She reveals that she knew what they were doing the whole time, the fact that her husband has never been found under her tree, and says they have work to do to make sure the bodies aren’t found. And that’s it. It just ended on that scene. I kept flipping back and forth to check that I didn’t miss any chapters. I would’ve liked to see an epilogue of the women’s lives a year or few years later. I’m okay with open ended books but in this case, I would’ve liked to see how these women’s lives were changed and improved and know for sure they weren’t caught.
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