A Beautiful, Terrible Thing: A Memoir of Marriage and Betrayal

(Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read and review an advanced copy of this book)

I read A BEAUTIFUL, TERRIBLE Thing by author Jen Waite this week and needed to wait a couple of days before I could write my review. This is a powerful book about a subject many women live with and do not talk about.

The book is a memoir of Jen’s marriage and the betrayal of all she believed to be true about the love of her life. It reminded me so much of the Lacey Peterson story, but thankfully Jen is a survivor. As the book progresses you will read how the emotional turmoil and the lies by Marco towards Jen becomes heartbreaking.

The book begins as Jen is holding her three week old baby and checking her email.  Wait…she finds a questionable email on the shared computer. As she reads, she can hardly breathe…it has to be a mistake!

The book is written in chapters of Before and After, which is very easy to understand the timeline of what is happening in their lives. I don’t post spoilers about the book, but I will say, once I started reading I did not want to stop. You just know what is happening is not going to turn out well.  I applaud Jen for being proactive and not waiting around to ask the hard questions and to seek the truth from Marco. Even though it would be easier to accept his explanations and excuses, she refuses to avoid the truth.

When she knows the truth of Marcos lies and infidelities, Jen does have trouble letting go of the need to check up on his personal media and phone records. She has become a bit obsessed with keeping track of his lies and his double life. She is addicted to feeling that she needs to know what he is doing and also wanting him to acknowledge what he has done is very wrong. This is the story of a smart young woman with a new baby, a lying, cheating husband, and now finds herself in major debt. It is also the story of how this betrayal nearly sunk her emotionally but with help of her family and therapy she has been able to redirect the hurt and anger.

Jen includes some very informative research about Sociopaths, Psychopaths, and Pathological liars.

A powerful book of facing a hard truth and surviving and then being able to start over.

**There is some strong language.