The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth

Hello Beautiful People! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth. The Soulmate is a dark mystery thriller that delves into how little someone can know a person that they claim to be the love of their life, in not one but two relationships.

Main Characters:

• Pippa Gerard: A lawyer and a mother who with her seemingly perfect family moves into a home near a popular cliff, when her husband goes out one day to try to save a woman from jumping off the cliff and sadly fails she doesn’t realize the whirlwind it will spin her and her family’s life into
• Gabe Gerard: Stay-at-home Dad, and home-made negotiator who attempts to convince the people jumping off the cliff near his home to live, when losing a life one day doesn’t realize that it will expose secrets he hoped to keep buried
• Amanda Cameron: The woman who takes her life by jumping off the cliff, her death exposes things about the Gerard’s and the weird parallels the couple has between her own life
• Max Cameron: Amanda’s husband who struggles to accept that she killed herself, the two didn’t have a perfect marriage but it was a good one so he struggles to understand what happened

** Some Warnings For Future Readers**

• Contains topics of suicide
• Contains topics of mental health issues
• Contains murder

My Review

I really liked the blurb for The Soulmate when I checked it out, and while it was a great book in some areas, I didn’t end up enjoying it as much as I had hoped. There was this element to the book which I struggled a bit to wrap my head around, and because of it, I think I just struggled a bit to connect to a lot of the characters. It was also very theatrical which can be a bit of a hit or miss for me and for this one, it was a bit of a miss. I did enjoy the mystery itself and while I did guess elements of it a lot of it I didn’t see coming at all. There are a lot of fantastic twists in this book that keep you guessing the whole time.

I gave The Soulmate a 7/10 rating. The book revolves around the relationships between Amanda and her husband Max but mainly the relationship between Pippa and Gabe. The differing perspectives were exciting in this book and I enjoyed getting to hear what Pippa had to say in the present and then what Amanda (from the grave) had to add in the past and present. On paper, the two couples are very different. Pippa and Gabe live in a cabin with a view of the ocean high above. The family lives comfortably with their two daughters and gives off the presentation of being the perfect family. Amanda and Max are older than Gabe and Pippa and live a much different lifestyle. Amanda is a stay-at-home wife while Max works during the day. While it seems like the two also had a good relationship there is this tone to Amanda early on in the book that gives off the sense that things may not be as good as they seem. While Amanda is a bit more forward about the issues at home Pippa tries to hide them and make it seem like things are better than they are.

I really struggled to connect/like a lot of the adult characters. They were all a bit insufferable in the way they acted, and it was a bit off the rails in some parts. An aspect of the book I struggled with was that Pippa works and Gabe takes care of their children because Gabe struggles with mental health issues that both of them want to hide from the world. Gabe is this very impulsive and rash character and originally it’s presented that it’s because he has ADHD and I was lowkey a bit confused. Don’t get me wrong ADHD like any neurological disorder is a spectrum and people can experience higher levels of symptoms than others. I have ADHD so I was just raising a brow at this being the explanation for the way Gabe acted, because these didn’t scream ADHD to me, it seemed way more intense than that. Some things can get exposed in the book and this is used as an excuse and I just felt like it was a bit lame. If it really was ADHD that made him act this way then it had to be one of the weirdest cases I’ve ever seen. Things get explained more throughout the book but this original aspect of the book just really threw me off for some reason.

The book follows the classic plot of two very different people having a lot more connection to one another than it originally seems. When Pippa hears the news that the woman Gabe was unable to save at the cliff near their home is Amanda Cameron, it’s a shock to hear that it was someone she and Gabe knew. Gabe weirdly never mentions this after she dies, and Pippa starts to wonder what Gabe is hiding and why? And if it has anything to do with her own secrets. Amanda and Max while seeming to be a bit more put together than Gabe and Pippa have plenty of skeletons in their closet that come out in the book as well. Max struggles to believe that Amanda would kill herself as he had a way more naive perspective on how their relationship was going at the time she passed. He becomes obsessed with figuring out why she would kill herself, and it becomes clear throughout the book that the connections are a lot stronger than they seem.

Overall, it’s not a bad read but not a favourite. I think if there was maybe one likable character in this book it would have made me like it a bit more. The mystery and the thrills are awesome and I have to say that despite the faulters on the characters for me in this book it didn’t take away from these aspects of the book. I finished this book in a day so it’s pretty fast-paced and a good weekend read for sure.

*** Spoilers ahead beware***

As I said before I liked the mystery in the book and while it wasn’t exactly unique, it was played out in a way I haven’t seen before. I found the ending to be a bit unsatisfying in some areas because I feel like the worst of the bad people got away with it and the somewhat bad people died.

Throughout the book it’s exposed that pretty much everyone involved here is a little bit terrible, but definitely Gabe and Pippa more than Amanda and Max. It’s exposed that Amanda died because she believed Max was cheating on her with Pippa. She had planned to expose this which would also ultimately expose the fact that while working for Max Gabe had killed a person who was causing them problems. Max had only hired Gabe because he found out Gabe was his nephew who didn’t know they were related and decided to keep it a secret from him. He kept it a secret because Gabe’s father was mentally ill like Gabe was and thought it would be too much for him to handle. Max being the dick head he is thought if anything could have been exposed to Gabe earlier on that he wasn’t suffering from ADHD but Bipolar and could have been on proper medication earlier. Due to being wrongly diagnosed Gabe’s behaviour gets worse which leads to the impulsive killing of an investor who was threatening Max’s company.

Gabe didn’t push Amanda but he didn’t exactly keep her safe or anything. The two were fighting on the cliff about Amanda exposing this stick drive on Max’s wrongdoings which included info on Gabe killing this investor which led to her falling. Pippa saw the position Gabe was in when Amanda fell and thought early on that he had pushed her but actively didn’t do much about it. The concern got higher though once she learned the woman was Amanda because she instantly felt like her death was her fault. Pippa doesn’t know about the stick drive until later but thinks that she jumped because she found out that she and Max kissed. This was a bit egotistical to me because it was just a kiss, but the reality was that she wanted more but it was Max who stopped it. Amanda learns this when she sees security footage from inside Max’s office and thinks the two slept together, however, they didn’t, and she dies thinking they did.

The book ends with Max taking the fall for the investor’s death to protect Gabe and then jumping off of the cliff to be with Amanda. I didn’t love it. I just hated that Max and Amanda died. I mean no one deserved to die in this book but especially not them. It’s not their fault that Pippa and Gabe’s instability ruined their lives in different ways. Pippa decides to divorce Gabe after this all deciding that she doesn’t need him to be happy and can find it on her own. I gave this a touch of an eye roll because like it was this that finally made you leave? Not the fact that he had a whole ass child with another woman? Overall just kind of a meh ending for me.

I hope you enjoyed this review! Have you read The Soulmate by Sally Hepworth before? What did you think?

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