Loverofbooks's Reviews > The Woman He Married

Julie Ford’s “The Woman He Married” introduces Josie, a mother of three, whose professional identity has gotten lost in the shuffle of supporting a high-profile husband caught up in the midst of a political campaign. The more Josie tries, the further she moves away from herself and what once made her happy. Before marriage and children, she had a career and a voice and a purpose. Now, her career is her family, her voice is overshadowed by that of her husband John’s, and her main purpose (according to John) is not to mess up his campaign. Numbing her lost hopes in the contents of a bottle, Josie becomes more of an embarrassment to her husband by the day while he finds satisfaction in someone else’s arms.
This is the story of two grown-ups doing grown-up things, making grown-up decisions but struggling to find the give and take in their relationship. While this isn’t ordinarily the genre I gravitate toward, I give the author credit for evoking the kind of raw emotion one feels while reading this book. Ford makes the reader keenly conscious of anger, jealousy, resentment, and loss through evocative characters and an emotionally charged plotline—a solid accomplishment for the best of writers.