I’m filling out my reading in 2022 by tackling some books on Best of Mystery and Thriller lists. What did I think of this one? Check out my Review of More Than You’ll Ever Know
More Than You’ll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez
Published on June 7, 2022 by William Morrow.
Lore Rivera was married to two men at once, until on a hot day in 1986, one of them found out and shot the other. A secret double life led to a tragic murder. That’s the story the world knows.
It’s not the story that fascinates Cassie Bowman.
Carrying the weight of her own family tragedy, true-crime writer Cassie wants to know more about the mysterious woman at the heart of it all: Lore.
How did one woman fall in love with two different men? How did she balance the love and the lies?
To her surprise, Cassie finds that Lore is willing to talk. To finally tell her heartbreaking story – about how a dance became an affair; how a marriage became a murder.
As the two women grow closer, Cassie finds she can’t help but confess her own darkest secrets.
But when she slowly starts to realise that there might be more to the night of the murder than anyone has realised, can either woman face up to the thing they’ve been hiding from: the truth?
What Else Has Katie Gutierrez Written?
More Than You’ll Ever Know was Katie Gutierrez’s debut book and was selected by the Good Morning America book club.
Review of More Than You’ll Ever Know
This book wasn’t really on my radar until I started looking at “best of 2022 lists.”
While I did think that More Than You’ll Ever Know was a well-written book, and Katie Gutierrez is an author I’ll keep my eye on, I wouldn’t really call this a true mystery and definitely not a thriller.
More Than You’ll Ever Know, with its plot of a journalist interviewing a notorious, mysterious woman, reminded me a lot of two recent books: The Book of Cold Cases by Simone James and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.
The problem (for me) with a book like this is that they usually feature past/present narratives. The risk with a structure like that is that 1) the reader gets repeatedly yanked back and forth in time and 2) usually one narrative is more compelling than the other.
(For the record, I thought The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo succeeded by putting Evelyn front and center. For me, The Book of Cold Cases was less successful and got super-weird at the end.)
Main character Cassie feels that Delores “Lore” Rivera is a fascinating woman whose story must be told. She thinks that a female bigamist is unusual enough to be worthy of having a book written about her. I didn’t really feel that way.
I liked Cassie, though at times she reminded me of a character in a Hallmark movie. You know, the ambitious career woman who has an extremely nice fiancé who doesn’t really understand or support her.
Cassie is keeping a secret from her fiancé, Duke, a secret that comprises yet a third narrative in the past. Of course, he’s hurt and upset when this secret is finally revealed, and I honestly can’t blame him.
For me, More Than You’ll Ever Know bounced around between too many different narratives.
There were Cassie’s interviews, Cassie and Lore’s conversations, Lore’s recollections from the 1980s, Cassie’s thinking about her family secret, Duke complaining to Cassie that she’s too obsessed with Lore and her life. (I agreed with him). The book was quite long (435 pages) and I think could have used some tightening up.
The other problem? Any possible tension in the book was relying upon things that already happened.
For me, this book didn’t have enough nearly tension and suspense to be classified as a true mystery or thriller. Yes, the 1986 murder of Andres Russo IS finally solved by the end of the book, but I didn’t really feel very invested in the victim or the crime.
While Katie Gutierrez is an author I’ll keep an eye on, More Than You’ll Ever Know really wasn’t the book for me.
Have you read this one? What did you think?