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You Should Have Known

by Jean Hanff Korelitz (Goodreads Author)

3.4 · Rating Details · 12,864 Ratings · 1,806 Reviews

Grace Reinhart Sachs is living the only life she ever wanted for herself, devoted to her husband, a pediatric oncologist at a major cancer hospital, their young son Henry, and the patients she sees in her therapy practice. Grace is also the author of You Should Have Known, a book in which she castigates women for not valuing their intuition and calls upon them to examine t ...more

Hardcover, 438 pages

Published March 2014 by Grand Central Publishing (first published 2014)

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Community Reviews

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Apr 23, 2014 Patrice Hoffman rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: first-reads-giveaways

It took quite a long time for me to finish this novel and the first thing I thought was ok?!!? That was it? You Should Have Known is the newest novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz about a marriage counselor Grace Reinhart Sachs and her rude awakening with the truth of her "picture-perfect" world. This novel is about her journey to reinvent herself and salvage any nugget of her life in the before.

Grace is soon to be releasing a novel named You Should Have Known which is an advice guide to women, urging It took quite a long time for me to finish this novel and the first thing I thought was ok?!!? That was it? You Should Have Known is the newest novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz about a marriage counselor Grace Reinhart Sachs and her rude awakening with the truth of her "picture-perfect" world. This novel is about her journey to reinvent herself and salvage any nugget of her life in the before.

Grace is soon to be releasing a novel named You Should Have Known which is an advice guide to women, urging them not to ignore the signs that caution the man they are with is not someone they should spend their lives with. She actually stands on her soapbox and looks down on the women who come to her office as she considers her own life. A caring husband who's a pediatrician, an intelligent son Henry, and a comfortable lifestyle that many in New York could only dream about. In other words, she's smug, uptight, almost unlikeable.

Then there's a death. A woman we really don't know, or have any idea how she is connected to this family is killed in an horrific manner. To top it off, Jonathan, Grace's husband disappears. With officer's knocking at the door, Grace finally takes a hard, long look in the mirror and sees she knows nothing or what she should have known.

Initially, I was on board with this novel. Korelitz had me eating out of her hand. I had to know more about the fall of this woman I never really came to like. After reading page after page of elusive, mysterious, and suggestive verbiage that just didn't give anything, I realized I didn't care anymore. Who cares who, where, or what the hell type of psychopath Jonathan is?

Amidst some well written passages is a storyline I felt couldn't stand up to my expectations anymore. The idea that it's suspenseful failed, but I hung in there. Some sort of sinister reveal was hoped for, but it never comes to fruition. I just wish... I would have known that after I'd spend more than a week on this novel, I would have feel so empty. Then again I did ignore all the signs. Shame on me.

All is not lost with this novel. I feel that maybe if I'd expected it to be more chick-litish as opposed to a true nail-biter I could have appreciated more. And there are moments when I could see that Jean Hanff Korelitz is actually a pretty good writer. It's just buried under a lot of nothing. My final grade is that You Should Have Known Better should have been better.

Copy Provided by Grand Central Publishing via Goodreads Giveaway
...more

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Jul 23, 2013 Jane rated it really liked it

On one hand, I found this book incredibly compelling. On the other, I found it very easy to SKIM, to get to what comes next. I had to restrain myself to read every line. I can't tell if it is because the plot was better than the writing or if I just had too much caffeine, the night I stayed up until 2 AM to finish this book!

This reminded me of an old-fashioned roller coaster: It starts with a pleasant ride - great characters and interactions. Then the suspense builds and builds and you come cras ...more

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Feb 27, 2014 switterbug (Betsey) rated it really liked it

In this compelling portrait of a psychotherapist and her family, the eponymous You Should Have Known refers to a book written by relationship/marriage therapist, Grace Reinhart Sachs. Grace’s self-help/relationship book candidly opens up to women about their penchant to ignore signs of toxic partners. She identifies the red flags that one should detect when hooking up with a lifetime partner. Grace claims that most of us “know,” even from the beginning, when a partner isn’t right for us; too In this compelling portrait of a psychotherapist and her family, the eponymous You Should Have Known refers to a book written by relationship/marriage therapist, Grace Reinhart Sachs. Grace’s self-help/relationship book candidly opens up to women about their penchant to ignore signs of toxic partners. She identifies the red flags that one should detect when hooking up with a lifetime partner. Grace claims that most of us “know,” even from the beginning, when a partner isn’t right for us; too often we disregard the evidence in our quest to try and reconcile that other person into our lives. Fortunately for Grace, she has had 17 happily married years with Jonathan, a compassionate pediatric oncologist. Until one day, her life turns upside down.

Grace's book is on the verge of being published; already she has had interviews with different magazines and TV news shows. Jonathan is supportive, her practice thrives, and their twelve-year-old son, Henry, is a bright student at a private, prestigious middle school. They live in the New York apartment that Grace grew up in. Their lives are content and balanced. And, then, a tragedy throws Grace into the teeth of an emotional storm. Her life has convulsed, her world is tilted, her compass is in uncharted territory, and misaligned. She has only herself, her comfort zones (special places in NY that she has known since childhood, a rural farmhouse in Connecticut, eateries she frequents), and her beloved son. Now, she thinks, who should have known?

There’s a crime, but this isn’t a crime book or police procedural, despite some conspicuous detectives. Rather, this is a narrative about one woman’s examination of her life and her memories, with the threat of facing shame, humiliation, fear, and sorrow, and the horror of admitting that she may have failed to follow her own advice. Everything that Grace’s life is about--her life in New York, the safety of her son, her marriage and her practice--it is all in turmoil as she tries to uncover the truth of her husband, as she stands on the precipice of disaster and ruin. Most of her friends have withdrawn, or feel awkward to help. Some have gossipy curiosities.

The captivating intimacy created by Korelitz draws the reader into Grace’s state of mind. We are taken on a journey of her past, including the details of how she revisits her memories. Grace begins to question the truth of her perceptions, which produces a chronicle of retrospection. Although it is written in the third person, the narrative reads like a private tunnel into Grace’s soul. The journey thrusts her into accepting new disclosures from her childhood past, and questioning all she holds dear now.

" what do I know? And what do I not know? Whatever she knew, could verify, could comprehend-- that thing could remain in situ, at least for now. Anything that could not be witnessed or vouched for she would leave in the open, an isolated artifact to return to when her strength returned..."

My only complaint is that the ending was too tidy, too convenient. Korelitz rendered a full life that turned into something savage and messy. I expected hope and redemption, yes, but not a wholesale and facile conclusion. That is why I knocked it down a star and gave it 4. But this may not bother all readers. In any case, the prose, structure, and characters were superlative. ...more

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Apr 10, 2015 Twigg rated it did not like it

Shelves: arc-galley, abandoned, bea-2013, realistic-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I usually don't comment on books I abandon, but I'm making an exception.

I wanted to love this book. I love the idea of a therapist writing a blunt relationship advice book. Setting up that premise took 28 pages. The next 70 were about planning and attending a fundraising party. Nothing of note happened for 100 pages.

My biggest issue was the adult-gossip-girl voice the narrator has. It's hard for me to read a book when I hate the main character (but not impossible. See: Close My Eyes). Grace spen ...more

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Mar 29, 2014 Lara Song rated it did not like it

It took me over a week to force myself to finish this. "You should have known" is an understatement. I knew I was going to give a bad review. I felt it was necessary to finish before judging.

Third person POV was actually first person. The narrator had the worst case of ADHD I've ever witnessed. You know those people that take an hour to tell a story because they have trouble focusing? To top it off, the crap the narrator speaks of is absurdly boring and contributes nothing to the story.

The story ...more

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Mar 07, 2014 Melanie Garrett added it · review of another edition

This is a hard one to quantify. For the first third I was teetering between 1 and 2 stars. While there is nothing wrong with having a main character who starts out as exceedingly shallow, signs of growth need to be showing much earlier on. But with Grace, there was almost no sign of hope. There was just no internal landscape or emotional scope - other than one-note self-pity. Unless you are deeply interested in what it is to be a smug, judgemental New York City private school mom with an all too This is a hard one to quantify. For the first third I was teetering between 1 and 2 stars. While there is nothing wrong with having a main character who starts out as exceedingly shallow, signs of growth need to be showing much earlier on. But with Grace, there was almost no sign of hope. There was just no internal landscape or emotional scope - other than one-note self-pity. Unless you are deeply interested in what it is to be a smug, judgemental New York City private school mom with an all too predictable handbag fetish you may feel you have unwittingly wandered into a bit of a losing game here. The were only really two people in the novel I wanted to know about, and one was dead, and the other on the run for her murder.

And yet, there really is a lot of good stuff going on here. It is a great concept, and could really have been a corker of a thriller, but reading it, I just didn't take away any sense at all that the author wanted to be writing a thriller, or indeed set out to do so. She likes detail, and is not remotely interested in plot. In fact, almost all the 'plot' bits are delivered after-the-fact, with the main character ruminating on events the reader wasn't actually even present for.

So I suspect part of my problem with this novel was that it has been marketed as something it simply isn't. There is nothing thrilling here whatsoever. Not that there is anything remotely wrong with this - but if you pick something up because you are in the mood for a thriller, and instead get minutiae and screeds of introspection, which then is accessorised as a thriller (cliff hangers plonked down as conversational gambit at the end of the very long chapters) then is it any wonder that so many reviewers are talking about their frustrations as readers, rather than what they liked about the book?

Which is quite a shame really, because Jean Hanff Korelitz can certainly write, certainly has insights to offer, and I personally got a lot out of reading the final quarter of the book. Some have said they felt the ending didn't do it for them, but I am wondering if this is also about the expectations the marketing has set up. But once I had accepted this was not a thriller after all, and that what was on offer was a story of aftermath and an (albeit very, very slow) emotional transition I stopped skimming and was hooked. The ending did pretty much work for me, and *almost* created that sense the best novels provide of leaving you feeling, of course, it had to end this way. SPOILER ALERT: The thing which stopped it from working completely was the letter Grace receives having been a hoax, an attempt to 'fuck with her' as the detective puts it. Because up until then, I don't think there was ever any sense that anything that was happening to Grace was in any way about 'fucking with her' as it were, but more that she and Henry were unfortunate collateral damage. Indeed, the explanation offered in the letter that events had got out of hand while trying to protect them seemed far more tragically plausible. Personally, I also think it would have been a lot more emotionally satisfying if Grace's decision in the face of the letter had been what precipitated the finally discovery, as this would have anchored her emotional journey to an *action* of some kind.

...more

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Feb 17, 2014 Nicole Overmoyer rated it really liked it · review of another edition

There are a lot of things about You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz that leave the reader, or maybe just me, conflicted. On the one hand, I absolutely didn't want to stop reading because I needed to know how things would turn out for marriage counselor Grace Reinhart Sachs. On the other hand, I absolutely loathed Grace Reinhart Sachs for about three-quarters of the book. This left me very confused as to why I cared what happened to her. Or maybe not so much confused, but guilty that I s ...more

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Apr 20, 2014 Elyse rated it really liked it

I already wrote a review (lost it), Don't you hate that??? I'll need to forgive myself for getting a little sloppy on this one.

I also read other Goodread reviews I understand comments readers who gave less than 4 stars. I saw flaws in this book.
YET:
Its a worthy book to read! GREAT TOPIC!!!! The story is 'very interesting' much of the time. A few slow parts --yet --I sure as hell wanted to know 'what was coming next'.

I've been married for 35 years. I've an interest in relationships working. I'v ...more

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May 27, 2014 Jennifer rated it it was ok

I should have known after the second page that this book was over-written and under-edited. The description of Grace's office knocked this insomniac out. Seriously - better than Ambien. Yet I'd seen so many good reviews I thought I'd stick with it.

And here's the thing - it's a good story. But mired in ridiculous details. You don't have to mention Birkin bags ad nauseum - and Grace's nestled in it's protective bag - to let us know she's privileged and around others even more wildly so than she. ...more

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Apr 20, 2014 Ellie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, nyc, 2014indchalnge

You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz

I bought this book on impulse after reading a review that sounded interesting.

I totally loved it-I read it in one sitting. It was actually addictive. It's sort of a mystery in which the both the crime and the criminal are already known.

The biggest problem is that it's somewhat facile, with story ends wrapped up too neatly, at least for me.

But that may be that I'm missing the point. In some ways, the book is a contemporary romance, with the conventions You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz

I bought this book on impulse after reading a review that sounded interesting.

I totally loved it-I read it in one sitting. It was actually addictive. It's sort of a mystery in which the both the crime and the criminal are already known.

The biggest problem is that it's somewhat facile, with story ends wrapped up too neatly, at least for me.

But that may be that I'm missing the point. In some ways, the book is a contemporary romance, with the conventions stood on their head but still standing and, more to the point, operating and dictating the action.

So this creates an odd tension between surface reality and the laws almost of a dream state.

But this is a small quibble when considering the amount of pleasure this book gave me.

It probably says a lot about me that I experienced the story of a New York therapist, married to a pediatric oncologist and a member of New York's 1% more by virtue of her past than her present. The book is filled with very enjoyable views of the private school parent set and the social gradations therein. It is also interesting for its discussion of our heroine Grace's book-about to be launched into the world-with the provocative title, "You Should Have Known" and its premise that most women coming into couples counseling to save their marriage knew (or should have known) the devastating truth about their partner (be it his contempt for her, for women, his gambling, his drinking, his true sexual orientation, whatever is now destroying their marriage) at the very beginning of their relationship but chose to "unsee" it. Somehow facing this will help keep them from repeating their mistakes. Even more importantly, Grace hopes readers (women) will read this and not make the fatal mistake to begin with.

Of course, the irony is that Grace does not see how this describes her own situation and her seemingly idyllic marriage. Her near-canonization of Jonathan, her husband, becomes somewhat cloying and nearly unbearable and the reader is quickly aware of the oncoming irony.

As I said, some of the neat resolutions to complicated situations made this book less than it could have been. But I could not (did not want to) put it down and escaped into it in a way that has become rare to me as I have become a more mature, possibly sophisticated reader. Even knowing what was going to happen did not destroy the pleasure of this book, this very New York City world with its superficial inhabitants amid which Grace struggles to penetrate her many illusions and, sometimes bravely, often fearfully, finally come to terms if not with reality at the very least with facts.

...more

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Mar 13, 2014 Denise rated it it was amazing

5 out of 5 stars - "If a woman chooses the wrong person, he was always going to be the wrong person: that was all."

I loved this book, which surprises me because it's not typically the type of novel that strikes me -- a fan of suspense thrillers and historical fiction. The incredible power of this book comes from the voice of its protagonist in an almost stream of consciousness narration that grabs and holds the reader in thrall until the very end.I found myself marking up the pages, highlighting ...more

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Mar 04, 2014 Carol rated it really liked it

Grace Reinhart Sachs has got it all. The trendy New York apartment, a son enrolled in the best private school, an oncologist husband who specializes in pediatrics; the perfect marriage, the perfect life. In her own right, Grace, a couple's therapist, is the author of a book soon to be published called You Should Have Known. It's the book for all her clients suffering the demise of their partnerships. If they had only noted the early signs, they would have known their marriages were destined for ...more

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Jul 09, 2015 Emily Mack rated it did not like it

Shelves: crime-thriller-mystery-suspense, couldnt-finish, 2015, chick, marriage

I JUST CAN'T with this book anymore. I am 300 pages in and officially calling it quits. It takes a LONG TIME for this book to go anywhere and then when you think it's going somewhere, it decides actually not to instead. Plus there's just wayyy too much foreshadowing -- so much so that I don't feel like I need to read the rest of the book to know the ending. Sorry, is this severe?

I do think the book has a interesting premise, but the writing wasn't outstanding enough to make up for the fact that ...more

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Dec 14, 2014 Carol rated it did not like it

Shelves: book-club

The book starts slowly and then hits the brakes. We know before we start the book that all is not as it seems in Grace Sachs' world. But trying to ride along while she susses it out is excruciating in overlong passages that never seem to end, as this books is at least 200 pages too long.

Speaking of long passages, there are long passages about everything. Everything from cashmere twinsets to cigarette smoking is broken down in laborious detail. We spend all this time in Grace's point of view for The book starts slowly and then hits the brakes. We know before we start the book that all is not as it seems in Grace Sachs' world. But trying to ride along while she susses it out is excruciating in overlong passages that never seem to end, as this books is at least 200 pages too long.

Speaking of long passages, there are long passages about everything. Everything from cashmere twinsets to cigarette smoking is broken down in laborious detail. We spend all this time in Grace's point of view for no apparent reason.

When Korelitz writes about Malaga (the main mystery here) it is in parts. She is pieces, breasts and weight. We are handed the bleak Grace as a complex person. But Malaga is big breasts and a lot of sex appeal. She is the pivot point of the story but all we need to know is that men circled around her. We know more about some of the minor character's handbags than we do Malaga. It's off-putting.

Unfortunately, the same thing is true of the story itself. Beyond the fact that it unfolds without a shred of mystery or surprise, it is slowly, often excruciatingly told. Perhaps the intent was to show a life coming apart detail by detail. But the effect is maddening. A cellphone rings at a crucial moment and we are treated to paragraphs of the contents of Grace's purse as she gropes for it. We are given details about a completely irrelevant dish of Chicken Marbella that Grace brings to a gathering. When she sits down in a chair, we read for three pages about who last sat in this chair and why and when and what he smoked while sitting in this chair and, oh, please, just STOP ALREADY. We wait — and wait — for Grace to open a crucial letter. We watch her replay the details of her life twice, from two different points of view.

There is also a lot of details of back ground characters, but barely anything about the husband or several others who should be considered lead characters. I know more about the spouse of the violin teacher than I do the husband. Too many of the characters are "missing" characters, just shadows in which no one interacts. Her husband, Jonathan, is the catalyst behind the entire story for Grace and their son, Henry, yet we never hear from him in this tale. He is off screen so to speak. We gain no insight into his thinking nor do we have one interaction between him and Grace.

Grace is the only mother at her son's school who isn't a vacuous snob, and we get plenty of opportunities to come to that realization. Her son has no faults, and may be the first 12 year old to immediately be accepted by other 12 year olds and flourish at a new school the very first day. The in-laws, villains at first, in an instant become the Cleavers, accepting her into their family without hesitation, after 20 years of no contact at all. It's okay that Grace's father cheated repeatedly on her mother, although we hate her husband for cheating on her. Her evil step-mother turns out to be a sweetheart; it was all a misunderstanding over some dishes. And perhaps the most disappointing of all, our heroine finds love within just a few months of fleeing her nightmare in NYC. At first he seems to be a local yokel, but wait, no, he's a college professor. So he is acceptable after all. He finds her adolescent son "wonderful" (as everyone does) and the son warms up to him instantly and forgets the father just as instantly. The only suspense in this book: would she end up in the arms of the lake neighbor, or the arms of the police detective. But the detective has a double chin, so we know it has to be the lake neighbor.

If this had not been a book club read, I would have put it down about 1/3 of the way through, but managed to finish it because I had to. Yipes, what fortitude I have sometimes. My book club tore this book to shreds. However, I must say we had so much fun doing it, that I guess I'm glad I finished it after all. ...more

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Apr 07, 2014 Malena Watrous rated it liked it

This book is all about the trees. Page by page, sentence by sentence, there's lots of good stuff. But if you stand back a bit, I question a lot of the craft choices that added up to the whole.

I like the premise--or at least, I find it intriguing: the notion that this woman Grace has no inkling that her husband was a serial cheater with the capacity to kill. A total sociopath. And that the woman in question is a therapist who considers herself an astute observer of humanity, and has written a boo This book is all about the trees. Page by page, sentence by sentence, there's lots of good stuff. But if you stand back a bit, I question a lot of the craft choices that added up to the whole.

I like the premise--or at least, I find it intriguing: the notion that this woman Grace has no inkling that her husband was a serial cheater with the capacity to kill. A total sociopath. And that the woman in question is a therapist who considers herself an astute observer of humanity, and has written a book admonishing women who didn't see the all too obvious signs. The premise screams irony a little too loudly perhaps, but it's still compelling. I like psychological thrillers, so I was excited to check it out.

I also like "unlikeable" characters, so some of Grace's flaws didn't bother me at all. That she is aloof, a bit snobby and superior, casting judgments on everyone save herself--fine. The private school world of Manhattan entertained me in its well parodied familiarity. I thought that the auction set piece was terrific--loved the opening where the auctioneers sells a glass of water for 12K.

2 things bothered me most. 1) Not ever meeting Jonathan, the important husband, in a single scene. He doesn't disappear from the book (or NYC) for at least 150 pages. I felt like she really should have shown him with his family that morning or at some point before he goes AWOl. It was simply impossible to form a complete sense of the extent to which Grace deluded herself about him without having seen him interacting with her or their son--without knowing him in the slightest.

2) The fact that everything ties up so neatly with a bow at the end. The son is okay and playing in a fiddling band. The mom has a new love interest. They have a great new dog. They're reunited with the husband's long suffering family, who are themselves all mending. It's just not realistic that you'd find out this guy was a murdering psychopath and "heal" or have "closure" that fast. The extent of the happy ending made this novel, which otherwise seemed like it wanted to be a serious treatment of a semi-plausible (recognizable from the media) situation, into something that felt much more "chick-litty." I realize that Grace needed to "learn something" and come out "a survivor," but I'm really not sure that this book needed or indeed deserved a happy ending. It's not that I wanted her punished, I just wanted the book to stay realistic. In particular I didn't think that the son would be as A-ok as he seemed. The ending of the book (indeed the whole book) also seemed never to make real the character of the murdered woman herself. It's always focused on how this family--his acknowledged family--deals with learning the truth about him. Just as we never meet Jonathan, we also never meet in scene the woman's 4th grade son or existing husband. I would have liked to see Grace have to deal with them--to get knocked out of her narrow perspective a little more. Near the end, she's still fixating on wanting her dead mother's good wedding china, which her stepmother took. I thought: really? Would anyone really care about china, after the entire foundation of their entire life was destroyed? ...more

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Dec 08, 2014 Roxie Leigh rated it did not like it

*sigh*

After nothing happened for five LONG chapters of blah blah blah details blah yawn blah Birkin.

Even when chapter six began by saying that "The end came...", nothing bloody happened. NOTHING! Every reveal was boring. Every plot twist was a limp noodle. I kept reading because I was hoping something, ANYTHING, would happen. But nothing ever did.

The MC was a boring, stupid, wishy-washy, moron. Aren't psychotherapists supposed to be great at asking the right questions? I wanted to punch her.

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Mar 10, 2014 Cindy Bokma rated it it was ok

I loved the premise of this novel- Grace, a therapist, has written a self help book for women called You Should Have Known and its slated to become a bestseller. In the beginning of the book, VOGUE magazine is even doing an article on Grace.

Grace is married to Jonathan, a successful pediatric oncologist, and has a son Henry. Grace and Jonathan are never together in the book so as a reader, we have no frame of reference for their relationship but Grace is happy in her marriage in her book, she s ...more

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Apr 13, 2014 JanB rated it really liked it

Compulsively readable, well-written, and thought-provoking. Grace is a therapist, married to a pediatric oncologist, and mother of a 12 year old son, Henry. She’s wound very tight, is a snob, and not very likable. The first part of the book is a rather scathing portrayal of Grace’s rarefied world on the Upper East Side of NYC. But to Grace, life is good and about to get better with the publication of her book. The book's title is You Should Have Known (nice touch!), and is based on her ...more

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Jun 04, 2014 Karin Slaughter rated it really liked it

Yeah, you should've known. I wish there had been more details about the murder. Sure, the narrator didn't want to know the lurid details, but I sure did!

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Mar 18, 2014 LiteraryMarie rated it it was ok

Grace Sachs is a successful therapist, mother to a young son and wife to a pediatric oncologist at a major cancer hospital. Grace is also the author of You Should Have Known, a book about women valuing their intuition and first impressions. It all hits the fan when the Grace's own marriage is in headlines. A bloody murder, a missing husband and unbelievable revelations rock Grace's world. She must heed her own advice and piece together what she knows and does not know.

I am the type of reader tha ...more

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Aug 08, 2015 Maria Espadinha rated it really liked it · review of another edition

É verdade, SIM...

Já devia saber...

Devia dar primazia à minha intuição e só depois escutar a torrente dos meus pensamentos!

Por isso, Obrigada! Obrigada por lembrares o que eu até sei mas que inadvertidamente esqueço ;)

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Aug 26, 2014 Sandy Nawrot rated it liked it

Shelves: audio

Doctor heal thyself. That is the saying that best fits this story. From word one, I hated the characters in this novel. The protagonist is a holier-than-thou therapist that has written a book, condescendingly telling people that "they should have known" their marriage was headed for doom. The signs had always been there. Doesn't it drive you crazy when you read an article that tells you the secrets to a happy marriage/a disciplined child/a healthier life? When realistically, these are the people Doctor heal thyself. That is the saying that best fits this story. From word one, I hated the characters in this novel. The protagonist is a holier-than-thou therapist that has written a book, condescendingly telling people that "they should have known" their marriage was headed for doom. The signs had always been there. Doesn't it drive you crazy when you read an article that tells you the secrets to a happy marriage/a disciplined child/a healthier life? When realistically, these are the people who are more screwed up than the rest of us. So when Grace starts passing judgement on her clients, my dislike was intense. Her, and her snobby friends who collect Birkin bags and turn their noses up at the families who attend their private school on scholarship. I thought "Stupid women, Karma is a bitch". I mean, you can see what's coming a mile away right?

And Grace does get hers. But even though she does ultimately realize that she has been a Class A Asshat, her renewal did nothing to soften my attitude towards her. She was just unlikable.

Her deplorable husband and catalyst for her demise is strangely absent from the entire story. We never hear from him, except for a few words in a letter. I'm certain this was intended by the author. The point of the story was not the psychopathic husband, but Grace herself, and her journey to redemption after she is knocked off her pedestal. Still, I felt it left a huge hole in the overall plot. Grace was not a strong enough character to carry the weight of the thing. I did feel compelled to continue to listen, but that momentum came from wondering what the hell happened with the husband? What was his story, what actually happened, where did he go? We get a few answers in a roundabout way, but nothing that feels satisfying.

The ending was a little too pat as well. And I can certainly live with pat endings if that is the only issue, but overall this one just didn't sit well with me.

The redeemer of the novel was the narrator in the audiobook. Christina Delaine was the narrator for this production, and with the exception of her gruff, lowered vocalization of the male characters, did a fantastic job of bringing this whole story to life. ...more

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Aug 15, 2014 Minty McBunny rated it liked it

Shelves: 2014, august-2014

This is a hard book to rate. 150 pages of interesting mystery interspersed with 300 pages of maundering introspection, half of which was probably superfluous.

The mystery part was good and fascinating, it had everything that recently read Circle of Wives lacked, as far as discovering you have no idea who your spouse is. But every time that aspect of the story kicked in, I felt like I was waking up from the eye glazing stupor the previous chapters of musings on Life In The City.

I should point ou ...more

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May 08, 2014 Karen rated it it was ok

Good grief, what meandering! What flat characterisations! What hubris...

What for? One of those darned 'popular titles' I had to finish based on time investment. Not sure what took me so long to realise this was NOT going to satisfy me on any level in the way (and theme-wise not unlike) Gone Girl.

One of those plot summaries that 'looks good on paper' but stretched out with not much in between. Honestly, if you found yourself reading about a character who describe counting streetlights to portray ...more

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Jun 09, 2016 Rosie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Fácil leitura, fácil a captar a nossa atenção. Faz-nos refletir até que ponto conhecemos os outros em profundidade (mesmo os mais próximos), do que são na sua verdadeira essência e do que são capazes. E de nós próprios, também sabemos com rigor? Quedas vertiginosas de vidas aparentemente perfeitas, mistério, falsidades, dramas domésticos e outros. O que vemos com olhos de ver ou o que cremos com o coração. Nem sempre o que parece é. Há que estar atento aos sinais, ao nosso instinto. Um thriller ...more

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Mar 26, 2014 Claire rated it really liked it

You Should Have Known is the story of therapist Grace Sachs, who appears to have a (realistically) ideal life with her husband, Jonathan, and their only child, Henry in New York City. While they are not as wealthy as the parents of Henry's classmates at Reardon, they live a comfortable life. Grace's mother has died and her father remarried, so Grace and Jonathan live in her parent's former apartment. Jonathan is a pediatric oncologist, and we see him nearly entirely through Grace's eyes You Should Have Known is the story of therapist Grace Sachs, who appears to have a (realistically) ideal life with her husband, Jonathan, and their only child, Henry in New York City. While they are not as wealthy as the parents of Henry's classmates at Reardon, they live a comfortable life. Grace's mother has died and her father remarried, so Grace and Jonathan live in her parent's former apartment. Jonathan is a pediatric oncologist, and we see him nearly entirely through Grace's eyes throughout the book.

Grace has just had a book accepted for publication called, "You Should Have Known", based on her theory that someone you are dating tells you almost everything you need to know about them in the beginning few dates -- before you really establish whether or not you like each other. That he may have done more than experiment with gay sex in college? That he dislikes women? That his inferiority complex would make him a less-than-ideal partner? All these things can be learned if women (since that's really her target readership - I'm not just trying to slam men) will subdue their attraction to someone and listen to what their dates are actually saying.

How ironic it is, then, when the mother of a child at Henry's school is killed, and Grace finds that Jonathan is mysteriously linked to the dead woman. I'm making this sound like a thriller, which this book both is, and is not. This is an extremely cerebral book, where emotions are held fairly firmly in check. That is due in large part to the fact that we see everything from Grace's point of view, and she is an extremely analytical and logical woman. She cannot comprehend that the man she had been married to for so long might not be the person she thought he was, and that her whole life has been a lie.

Once the pieces start unraveling (and it takes about 100 pages for this to happen, so you've got to be patient and just immerse yourself in Grace's world, even though you may find yourself murmuring, "get to the point, already")they reveal in spectacular fashion, the manner in which someone who observes so much can actually see so little.

I raced through the book, and the sense of foreboding that it gives you cannot be understated. (I kept checking on my husband, who was woodworking in our garage, just to be sure he hadn't vanished somewhere.) The ending wraps up a little too neatly, but after what Grace and Henry had been through, I didn't really mind. I needed a respite from the nearly constant revelations about Jonathan, and I wanted Grace to have a little bit of happiness, if only a page or two.

I give this book four out of five stars because I just didn't feel an emotional connection with Grace. I don't believe the reader is supposed to. Grace represents a certain kind of intelligent, analytical woman who appears to be completely wrapped up on her own family and her own concerns. She doesn't have a lot of friends, which is part of the point of the novel - and the reader feels Grace's reserve. I can't decide whether the book would be more compelling if you were emotionally entangled with Grace, or whether it needs its reserve to build the anxiety that seems to seep off the pages.

Either way, it is still an excellent book, and one that I think could generate a lot of discussion at a book group, or just among friends. This is definitely worth reading, and a pretty worthy successor to my most recent favorite read, The Goldfinch. ...more

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Jun 04, 2015 Katie rated it really liked it

Clever little novel about a couples therapist who counsels people and writes a book all about how your gut feeling about your mate is usually correct. In other words, if you THINK "I wonder if he's gay? Oh well" and then proceed to have a relationship with him and marry him and then later he leaves you for a man, well, "you should have known." Or, if you notice him eyeing other woman while you're out, and think "well, boys will be boys!" and then he cheats on you years later, well, "you should ...more

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Apr 25, 2014 Sarah rated it really liked it

I enjoy thrillers. I like going through the steps with the protagonist as she discovers what has happened (always bad), retraces her steps to uncover clues and deals with a devastating situation. I enjoy the inner dialogue. I enjoy watching the unreliable narrator choose between staying in denial (staying unreliable) or bringing the truth to light (becoming reliable). I don’t need face paced action, but enjoy how things unravel in a probable way.

If you enjoy this style of book, you will enjoy th ...more

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Jun 04, 2014 Judy Colprubin rated it it was ok

Reading this novel is like following a trail scattered with breadcrumbs. At first you admire the view and easy of passage -- hey there's another crumb! -- but then you start to get annoyed that it's so easy. Where are the twists and turns that enhance any trail? Why is it so darn predictable? I suspect many readers will also find it hard to accept that a Harvard-educated psychologist could be so incredibly naïve or that a 12-year-old boy whose world is upended could adapt so easily. Still, ...more

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Sep 02, 2016 Arwen56 rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: romanzi, lett-americana, usa

Il proverbio dice che "a caval donato non si guarda in bocca". Tuttavia, talvolta sarebbe meglio farlo.

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“And one day she said to me, 'For the rest of my life, it's the first thing they'll say about me when I leave the room.' And I remember thinking: Yes that's true, it will be. But we can't really do anything about what they say when we leave the room. We'll never be able to control that. And we shouldn't try. Our job is just to...well, be in the room while we're there, and try not to think too much about where we're not. Whatever room we happen to be in, just, be there.” — 1 likes

“if you’re paying attention, if your eyes and your ears and your mind are open, as they should be open. You can know and then, critically, hold on to that knowledge, even if he loves you (or seems to), even if he chooses you (or seems to), even if he promises to make you happy (which no one, not one person on the planet, can possibly do). And part of her, a big part of her, had obviously wanted to be the one who told them this. Because I am such a competent” — 1 likes

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