Why I Wasn’t Into “The Soulmate” (Warning! Contains Spoilers!)

I absolutely loved The Good Sister and The Mother-in-Law. The reveals in a Sally Hepworth novel have made me literally gasp out loud before. So I was very excited to get The Soulmate, and immediately put aside any other reading (or, let’s be honest, pre-semester paperwork) to see what wild and twisty ride she has for us this time.

In The Soulmate, lovebirds Pippa and Gabe, and their two little daughters, move to a lovely coastal cottage, without fully realizing that the picturesque cliff is a popular suicide spot.  They discover that Gabe has an uncanny ability to talk people down, though, and he prevents seven suicides simply by talking to them. The eighth stranger who turns up upset and alone on their cliff turns out to be less of a stranger…

Overall, The Soulmate was just OK. It has that wonderfully tense Sally Hepworth feel of wondering who to trust and who’s twisting the truth, but it kinda felt like the whole book was a fakeout. I like to be able to guess a little bit of a thriller, but it’s less interesting when the baddie is too clear and obvious.

Spoilers ahead, ya’ll. If you’re going to read The Soulmate, leave now and don’t read my reactions to major twists here! Come back after you’ve read the ending so my post doesn’t spoil the ending for you!

Still here? Let’s go.

From the very beginning of the book, you know Pippa saw Gabe push Amanda off the cliff. She saw it, she tells the reader she saw it, there’s not really a question of how Amanda died. So for there to be any tension, you really have to buy Gabe as the perfect husband, and there has to be some way that isn’t really what happened… and I was already rolling my eyes at his stay-at-home dad perfection. Pippa’s still constantly loading the dishwasher and wiping countertops, organizing their lives, while she works her actual job, and Gabe does all the fun parenting stuff.  (There’s definitely a sad realism in Pippa making doctors’ appointments for the girls and cleaning up after them all, and Gabe getting ALL the compliments as a great father, though.)

Plus, I thought Pippa’s story about how Gabe changed jobs 4 times in a year was full of red flags, but I was expecting a Hepworth twist, so I was excitedly reading along like, ok, got it, wonder what dark secret his total irresponsibility is gonna turn up? I wonder how his complete immaturity is gonna lead to the big shocking twist! I guess it just felt like a letdown when his total irresponsibility was the big shock.

Basically by the time Pippa started to notice that maybe Gabe wasn’t reliable, I was already hoping he would get arrested and leave her alone. The most interesting part of this book was reading a thriller and rooting against the main character, in favor of the guy getting caught and sent to jail.

The other thing is that for any of the mystery to work, you have to believe that a tech guy is like “This video here? That’s attached to the email? That’s the part of the surveillance you wanted me to delete, right, Boss?” and the mastermind behind both the surveillance and the deletion request says yes, and then no one deletes it from the email chain, and ugh, I rolled my eyes soooo hard here.  I felt like this in parts of The Love of My Life, when certain characters seemed determined to Whatsapp and journal their dark secrets, but I guess I could better accept sneaky fails from  everyday people better than I could accept it from a character who’s a manipulative genius the rest of the time.

And then you gotta believe that the incriminating thumb drive drops off a cliff and falls into the ocean and it’s got — you know what? Forget the indestructible evidence, I just didn’t buy any of that plotline.

Finally, if you’re still with me on my list of meh, I thought the ending was an absolute letdown. There’s old Pippa was still putting up with Gabe’s mess and enabling him and setting him up for fatherhood success! Ugh, no.

Anyway, The Soulmate was fine, it wasn’t a terrible thriller, just kind of underwhelming. I’ll still get the next Hepworth domestic thriller, though, because I loved The Good Sister and The Mother-in-Law so much.