Hey, it’s Diego.

My two weeks of misery are over. I'm back to my normal reviewing schedule. More info in the Latest Updates section if you are curious.

This week, I read As Far As She Knew by Diana Awad.

And it follows a woman piecing things together after her husband dies suddenly.

A wife investigating who her husband really was after he's gone is a setup that comes up time and again in domestic thrillers.

Here are my favorites.

After He's Gone Thrillers

Into the Fall by Tamara L. Miller

Sarah's family goes on a camping trip in the Canadian wilderness, and overnight, her husband Matthew disappears. She and her two young kids barely make it back to civilization, where she starts piecing together what happened to him and how his past played a role.

In Into the Fall by Tamara L. Miller, we follow Sarah as she works out who Matthew really was and what he had been hiding from her.

Gone Before Goodbye by Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon

Maggie, a disgraced army surgeon, is hired for a clandestine plastic surgery on a Russian oligarch and finds the trail leads back to her dead husband. The deeper she goes, the clearer it becomes that his death was no accident.

In Gone Before Goodbye by Harlan Coben and Reese Witherspoon, we follow Maggie as she pulls at the thread until she finds out what really happened to him.

Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister

Camilla goes back to work after maternity leave only for the day to be hijacked by breaking news: her husband Luke is the gunman in a hostage situation. The man she has built a life with is suddenly someone else entirely.

Famous Last Words by Gillian McAllister follows Camilla as she pieces together who Luke really was, with the hostage negotiator's chapters running alongside hers.

And the newest addition to the list:

As Far As She Knew by Diana Awad

Amira Abadi believed for twenty-three years that her marriage to Ali was rock solid. Then a car accident takes him, and within days, she is holding the keys to a house she has never seen, hours from home. Inside is a woman she has never met. As Amira retraces Ali's steps, she begins to find a hidden company, undisclosed assets, and a name from his past she had never heard him say.

As Far As She Knew by Diana Awad is a domestic thriller about a tight-knit Arab American family.

Awad's writing has a "dear diary" quality to it, glossing over details and going over events as if remembering the events years later, which meant I didn't feel much for Amira. Her husband's death lands without much weight, and the story skips past the grief and the psychological trauma straight to the "action".

We follow Amira through a Before / Now dual timeline in a single POV. I enjoyed the Now timeline as the mystery and thrills happen during these chapters, with Amira finding new information with every plot beat, which is a setup I am a sucker for. The Before timeline adds relationship context but doesn't feed into the mystery, which made it drag at times. The plot picked up quickly, though.

Amira is a proactive protagonist who grows over the course of the story, doing her own investigating and pulling at threads herself. The story leans into mystery and suspense with some thrills, and the tone stays light throughout.

There are strong threads of women's independence from the men in their lives, and of how a single secret can turn someone you know into someone you don't.

The Arab American family culture at the centre of the story was something I enjoyed reading about. It's not a culture I see often in domestic thrillers, and the family dynamics were new and interesting to me.

There is no romance, no sexual content, no swearing, and no graphic violence.

So, what about the ending? (No spoilers, obviously)

I enjoyed the ending. The denouement was good, long enough to paint a picture of where the characters land once the dust settles.

As Far As She Knew by Diana Awad is a domestic thriller around a wife uncovering who her husband really was. If you enjoy proactive protagonists and finding things out alongside them, you'll like this one.

Latest Updates

• Caller Unknown by Gillian McAllister hits shelves on May 5. Simone takes her teenage daughter Lucy on a holiday in Texas to reconnect, but on their first night in the desert, she wakes to find Lucy gone, a phone left in her place, and a message making it clear that to get Lucy back, she will have to commit a crime. McAllister wrote Famous Last Words, which I covered in January.

• Molka by Monika Kim came out in April. Inspired by the South Korean hidden-camera scandals, it follows an office worker who slowly unravels and goes after the two men who exploited her.

• I’ve been sending issues of this newsletter for a year and four months now with the intention of eventually, at some point, writing books in the genres I love: psychological and domestic thrillers. In the past two weeks, I’ve been in consultation at my day job, and I’ve finally been informed that I’ll be let go as part of a worldwide layoff happening at the company I work for. After some soul-searching (and checking the financials with my partner), I’ve made the brave (read: risky) decision to hold off from looking for a new job straightaway and give it an honest-to-God shot at writing thrillers. I’ll be aiming to release a series of thrillers this year and focus my efforts on growing this newsletter as a full-time job. It’s pretty scary, not going to lie, but I’ve been meaning to write stories for a long time now, and I feel that if I don’t do it now, I may never get this chance again. So watch this space for news on upcoming releases from me, hopefully, soon.

That’s all for this week. See you next time.

— Diego Dunne

P.S. Let me know how I did today by replying to this email.

P.P.S. I would love to hear your recommendations for thrillers you loved. Reply to this email, and I’ll add them to my TBR list. Thanks!