#Book #Review: The Innocent Wife by Amy Lloyd #NetGalley #TheInnocentWife

Publication date 28 December 2017

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher Random House UK Cornerstone in exchange for an honest review

Book description:

A young schoolteacher falls for a man on Death Row whom she believes is falsely accused, only to begin wondering after their marriage – and his release.

Twenty years ago Dennis Danson was arrested for the brutal murder of Holly Michaels in Florida’s Red River County. Now he’s the subject of a Making a Murderer-style true crime documentary that’s taking the world by storm – the filmmakers are whipping up a frenzy of coverage to uncover the truth and free the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice.
Samantha may be thousands of miles away in Britain, but she is as invested in Dennis’s case as any of his lawyers. Perhaps even more so, as her letters to the convicted killer grow ever more intimate. Soon she is leaving her life behind to marry Danson and campaign, as his wife, for his release.
But when the campaign is successful, and Dennis is freed, events begin to suggest that he may not be so innocent after all. How many girls went missing in Red River, and what does Dennis really know?

My review:

Despite the content of this book, I found it a straightforward compelling read.  What makes seemingly ordinary women want to contact a prisoner on Death Row?
Samantha is a young school teacher from England who has recently become single.  She finds online details of Dennis Danson a man who was sentenced to the death penalty at the age of 18 for the abduction and murder of an 11 year old girl in America. He is subject of a documentary and campaign to free him as there is a strong group of followers who believe him to be innocent and the victim of a local hate campaign by locals and the police. We follow the progression of Samantha and Dennis's relationship via letters they sent each other - the early format of the book I found quite difficult to settle in to as a lot of it is the transcripts of their letters and sections of crime reports and books written about the case. It isn't long before Samantha has booked a flight over to meet him in prison and he soon proposes marriage.
Then suddenly there is a breakthrough and Samantha finds herself in a whole new scenario as Dennis's wife when he is released.  She has doubts about his feelings for her and indeed whether he really is innocent.  The reader is party to all her thought processes and reasoning and the tension builds quite spectacularly through the second half of the book.  Old grudges and suspicions come to the fore and people from Dennis's past return to have their say, leading Samantha to realise just how little she really knows about her husband. I hate to use the time-honoured phrase that I didn't want to put this book down, but especially towards the end of the book I couldn't read fast enough to find out what had actually happened all those years before and what that meant for Samantha and Dennis' relationship.
A great read that will have the hairs on the back of your neck prickling.

About the author:

Amy Lloyd won the Daily Mail and Penguin Random House First Novel competition in 2016 with her thriller 'The Innocent Wife'.