Ar fi trebuit sa stii

by Jean Hanff Korelitz

Grace Reinhart Sachs is living the only life she ever wanted for herself, devoted to her husband, a pediatric oncologist at a major cancer hospital, their young son Henry, and the patients she sees in her therapy practice. Grace is also the author of You Should Have Known, a book in which she castigates women for not valuing their intuition and calls upon them to examine their first impressions of men for signs of serious trouble later on. But weeks before the book is published, a chasm opens in her own life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only a chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disast and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Book Club, Mystery Thriller, Contemporary, Suspense

Unknown Binding

First published March 18, 2014

About the author

Author of nine novels: THE SEQUEL (2024), THE LATECOMER (2022), THE PLOT (The Tonight Show's "Summer Reads" pick for 2021), THE UNDOING, originally published as YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN (adapted by David E. Kelley for HBO and starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant and Donald Sutherland), ADMISSION (adapted as the 2013 film of the same name, starring Tina Fey, Lily Tomlin and Paul Rudd), THE DEVIL AND WEBSTER, THE WHITE ROSE, THE SABBATHDAY RIVER and A JURY OF HER PEERS, as well as a middle-grade reader, INTERFERENCE POWDER, and a collection of poetry, THE PROPERTIES OF BREATH.

Watch for television adaptations of THE PLOT and THE LATECOMER!

I'm the founder of BOOKTHEWRITER, a New York City based service that offers "Pop-Up Book Groups" where readers can discuss books with their authors in person and online. Please join our mailing list at www.bookthewriter.com to hear about our events.

If you've become aware of my work via THE UNDOING, you should know that my novel differs significantly from the adaptation -- and that's fine with me! Just know that the twists you might be expecting will likely not be there on the page. Other twists, yes, but you'll have to read the book to find them.

If you're trying to reach me, please know that I don't do any communicating through Goodreads, and that includes FRIEND REQUESTS AND FOLLOWING. (You may also infer that I've read more than the few books listed here, all of which are -- coincidence? -- written by me. I have another GOODREADS account, under another name, with which I keep track of my reading, but it's private.) I'm particularly inept on Facebook, as well, so trying to reach me that way will be spectacularly ineffective. If you want to get in touch, please use the contact form on my website, jeanhanffkorelitz.com

Thanks so much for your interest in my work!

Jean Hanff Korelitz

Reviews

[Patrice Hoffman · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took quite a long time for me to finish this novel and the first thing I thought was ok?!!? That was it? You Should Have Known is the newest novel by Jean Hanff Korelitz about a marriage counselor Grace Reinhart Sachs and her rude awakening with the truth of her "picture-perfect" world. This novel is about her journey to reinvent herself and salvage any nugget of her life in the before.

Grace is soon to be releasing a novel named You Should Have Known which is an advice guide to women, urging them not to ignore the signs that caution the man they are with is not someone they should spend their lives with. She actually stands on her soapbox and looks down on the women who come to her office as she considers her own life. A caring husband who's a pediatrician, an intelligent son Henry, and a comfortable lifestyle that many in New York could only dream about. In other words, she's smug, uptight, almost unlikeable.

Then there's a death. A woman we really don't know, or have any idea how she is connected to this family is killed in an horrific manner. To top it off, Jonathan, Grace's husband disappears. With officer's knocking at the door, Grace finally takes a hard, long look in the mirror and sees she knows nothing or what she should have known.

Initially, I was on board with this novel. Korelitz had me eating out of her hand. I had to know more about the fall of this woman I never really came to like. After reading page after page of elusive, mysterious, and suggestive verbiage that just didn't give anything, I realized I didn't care anymore. Who cares who, where, or what the hell type of psychopath Jonathan is?

Amidst some well written passages is a storyline I felt couldn't stand up to my expectations anymore. The idea that it's suspenseful failed, but I hung in there. Some sort of sinister reveal was hoped for, but it never comes to fruition. I just wish... I would have known that after I'd spend (rather waste) more than a week on this novel, I would feel so empty. Then again, I did ignore all the signs. Shame on me.

All is not lost with this novel. I feel that maybe if I'd expected it to be more chick-litish as opposed to a true nail-biter I could have appreciated more. And there are moments when I could see that Jean Hanff Korelitz is actually a pretty good writer. It's just buried under a lot of nothing. My final grade is that You Should Have Known Better should have been better.

Copy Provided by Grand Central Publishing via Goodreads Giveaway

[Lara Song · Rating 1 out of 5]

It took me over a week to force myself to finish this. "You should have known" is an understatement. I knew I was going to give a bad review. I felt it was necessary to finish before judging.

Third person POV was actually first person. The narrator had the worst case of ADHD I've ever witnessed. You know those people that take an hour to tell a story because they have trouble focusing? To top it off, the crap the narrator speaks of is absurdly boring and contributes nothing to the story.

The story is predictable. The time line is completely out of whack in the third section. She speaks of events in past and present in the same sentence. It's very frustrating.

Grace should have been the murder victim. People as stupid as her deserve what they get.

It was unbelievably unrealistic. There was zero character development. The minimal dialogue throughout the story was pointless. The narrator conveys important details by completely avoiding the situation or rather, speaking in circles.

This novel should be read by anyone who wants to write. It covers every item on the do not do list. Show, don't tell. And please, don't ramble.

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

I already wrote a review (lost it), Don't you hate that??? I'll need to forgive myself for getting a little sloppy on this one.

I also read other Goodread reviews I understand comments readers who gave less than 4 stars. I saw flaws in this book.
YET:
Its a worthy book to read! GREAT TOPIC!!!! The story is 'very interesting' much of the time. A few slow parts --yet --I sure as hell wanted to know 'what was coming next'.

I've been married for 35 years. I've an interest in relationships working. I've an interest in 'taking responsibility for relationships working.....(not kicking below the belt --not doing harm to myself or others). Sometimes I succeed -other times I have failed.

This book creates an 'opening-for-discussion' about ALL TYPES of relationships in my opinion. It sure can anyway!!!! (I like books which do this). It allows for 'thinking' ---and more thinking....(and more thinking....

I'll suggest this book to others--
I'd love to read this author again --
I'm thankful to have won this book as a 'first-reads'--
"You Should Have Known"--[And Sometimes, you just never know].....*until you do*! :)




Merged review:

I wrote a review of this book years ago -right after I read it. People keep sending me little notices ....hm?

Not sure where the review is.... but I enjoyed the book!!!

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

On one hand, I found this book incredibly compelling. On the other, I found it very easy to SKIM, to get to what comes next. I had to restrain myself to read every line. I can't tell if it is because the plot was better than the writing or if I just had too much caffeine, the night I stayed up until 2 AM to finish this book!

This reminded me of an old-fashioned roller coaster: It starts with a pleasant ride - great characters and interactions. Then the suspense builds and builds and you come crashing down. Very exciting. Then the last section - a large part of the book - is a glide to an extremely predictable conclusion.

[Holly B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a love/hate relationship with this book!!

I really wanted to read it because I enjoyed the author's current book, The Plot and I plan to watch the HBO series The Undoing (starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant). I've heard good things!

First of all, the pace was very slow! I mean, some mundane details that literally lulled me to sleep, but other times I was compelled to follow these characters. I was invested enough to find out what would happen next.

Very character driven, slow-burning and way too long! Could have been so much better with 100 pages cut out (in my opinion)! Its over 400 pages!! If you like these slow-burning type of dramas, this would be for you. It has moments of suspense, but I would NOT call this a thriller.

I bought my copy via Amazon/ kindle version.

[Karin Slaughter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yeah, you should've known. I wish there had been more details about the murder. Sure, the narrator didn't want to know the lurid details, but I sure did!

[Nayra.Hassan · Rating 3 out of 5]

و اذا عاد بي الزمن سافعلها مرة و مرات بلا تردد
لا تعيدها بل إلغيها*؛هكذا يقولون في الغرب*
لكننا نعلم طبعا ان هناك الكثير في حياتنا لن يخضع لذلك الزر السحري
Undo

هل من الممكن اعادة اطفالك الي علم الغيب مثلا؟
هل من الممكن ان تلغي ركوبك لقطار احترق؟
هل بمجرد الطلاق؛يغيب اي اثر دائم للشريك في حياتك؟

للمرة الالف يتسائل مؤلف :الي اي حد تعرف شريك حياتك؟ و هل هناك ما يسمي بالمعرفة حقا؟
في إطار بوليسي نفسي نري ورطة للعمر لطبيبة نفسية" ناجحة"!! من اصول ثرية؛ زوجة سعيدة لطبيب سرطان اطفال و أم لصبي نابه
يتحطم غرورها/حياتها:عندما تفاجئ بزوجها متهم في جريمة قتل وحشية لأم شابة

و تنكشف حقائق كارثية تدريجيا عن كل من حولها؛ لتدرك بهدوء انها لا تعرف احدا علي الاطلاق؛ و تفرض عليها الحقائق خيارات لم تكن تتخيل انها قادرة عليها
الشخصيات الاساسية كلها متقنة عدا شخصية الضحية و الابن

الرواية صدرت تحت اسم؛ "كان يجب عليك ان تدرك"
You should have known
اما المسلسل القصير فاختار هذا الفعل السحري
The undoing
او ليس الالغاء هو ما نتوق اليه جميعا كل حين

[Carol · Rating 1 out of 5]

The book starts slowly and then hits the brakes. We know before we start the book that all is not as it seems in Grace Sachs' world. But trying to ride along while she susses it out is excruciating in overlong passages that never seem to end, as this books is at least 200 pages too long.

Speaking of long passages, there are long passages about everything. Everything from cashmere twinsets to cigarette smoking is broken down in laborious detail. We spend all this time in Grace's point of view for no apparent reason.

When Korelitz writes about Malaga (the main mystery here) it is in parts. She is pieces, breasts and weight. We are handed the bleak Grace as a complex person. But Malaga is big breasts and a lot of sex appeal. She is the pivot point of the story but all we need to know is that men circled around her. We know more about some of the minor character's handbags than we do Malaga. It's off-putting.

Unfortunately, the same thing is true of the story itself. Beyond the fact that it unfolds without a shred of mystery or surprise, it is slowly, often excruciatingly told. Perhaps the intent was to show a life coming apart detail by detail. But the effect is maddening. A cellphone rings at a crucial moment and we are treated to paragraphs of the contents of Grace's purse as she gropes for it. We are given details about a completely irrelevant dish of Chicken Marbella that Grace brings to a gathering. When she sits down in a chair, we read for three pages about who last sat in this chair and why and when and what he smoked while sitting in this chair and, oh, please, just STOP ALREADY. We wait — and wait — for Grace to open a crucial letter. We watch her replay the details of her life twice, from two different points of view.

There is also a lot of details of back ground characters, but barely anything about the husband or several others who should be considered lead characters. I know more about the spouse of the violin teacher than I do the husband. Too many of the characters are "missing" characters, just shadows in which no one interacts. Her husband, Jonathan, is the catalyst behind the entire story for Grace and their son, Henry, yet we never hear from him in this tale. He is off screen so to speak. We gain no insight into his thinking nor do we have one interaction between him and Grace.

Grace is the only mother at her son's school who isn't a vacuous snob, and we get plenty of opportunities to come to that realization. Her son has no faults, and may be the first 12 year old to immediately be accepted by other 12 year olds and flourish at a new school the very first day. The in-laws, villains at first, in an instant become the Cleavers, accepting her into their family without hesitation, after 20 years of no contact at all. It's okay that Grace's father cheated repeatedly on her mother, although we hate her husband for cheating on her. Her evil step-mother turns out to be a sweetheart; it was all a misunderstanding over some dishes. And perhaps the most disappointing of all, our heroine finds love within just a few months of fleeing her nightmare in NYC. At first he seems to be a local yokel, but wait, no, he's a college professor. So he is acceptable after all. He finds her adolescent son "wonderful" (as everyone does) and the son warms up to him instantly and forgets the father just as instantly. The only suspense in this book: would she end up in the arms of the lake neighbor, or the arms of the police detective. But the detective has a double chin, so we know it has to be the lake neighbor.

If this had not been a book club read, I would have put it down about 1/3 of the way through, but managed to finish it because I had to. Yipes, what fortitude I have sometimes. My book club tore this book to shreds. However, I must say we had so much fun doing it, that I guess I'm glad I finished it after all.

[Shannon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I usually don't comment on books I abandon, but I'm making an exception.

I wanted to love this book. I love the idea of a therapist writing a blunt relationship advice book. Setting up that premise took 28 pages. The next 70 were about planning and attending a fundraising party. Nothing of note happened for 100 pages.

My biggest issue was the adult-gossip-girl voice the narrator has. It's hard for me to read a book when I hate the main character (but not impossible. See: Close My Eyes). Grace spent a good amount of time complaining that she only has one Birkin bag (bags that retail for $5k+) and other women have more! And hers is ONLY leather. Again, this is bag that costs 2 months gross salary for me.

And then there was the incident where after dropping of her son for a party, the hostess said that the doorman could hail a cab for Grace. Grace then felt "a queasy feeling, like a twister-tossed girl from Kansas emerging into unreal Technicolor". The hostess didn't know Grace has lived in upper-crust New York her entire life. She had a doorman too! Did this mom think Grace was less than fabulously wealthy??

I had to stop when Grace and Co's reaction to a woman's murder wasn't sympathy for the woman's children and family, it was scrambling to distance this woman from their perfect private school. They decided that since the deceased's son attended on a scholarship, he wasn't a full student. Their reputation was kept intact. Because that's what mattered most.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I should have known after the second page that this book was over-written and under-edited. The description of Grace's office knocked this insomniac out. Seriously - better than Ambien. Yet I'd seen so many good reviews I thought I'd stick with it.

And here's the thing - it's a good story. But mired in ridiculous details. You don't have to mention Birkin bags ad nauseum - and Grace's nestled in its protective bag - to let us know she's privileged and around others even more wildly so than she. We got it.

Mistakes bug me in a published book that has allegedly gone thru editing and proofing and this one had a gigantic glaring one. Or maybe I misread - not going to re-read to confirm. But wasn't the big dinner at her father's on Friday nights? She goes without Jonathan and then the cops come. Shocked by the news, she starts the next day canceling her appointments for Friday. And taking the kid to school. But it's Saturday, right?

It would have taken much more creativity to lose the endless descriptions of wealth and maybe make Grace middle class. Where would a woman making $50k go to start her and her son's life over without a family lake house to fall into? Now that requires some thought.

But the real kicker was throwing in the love interest at the end. Just too much.

[JanB · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compulsively readable, well-written, and thought-provoking. Grace is a therapist, married to a pediatric oncologist, and mother of a 12 year old son, Henry. She’s wound very tight, is a snob, and not very likable. The first part of the book is a rather scathing portrayal of Grace’s rarefied world on the Upper East Side of NYC. But to Grace, life is good and about to get better with the publication of her book. The book's title is You Should Have Known (nice touch!), and is based on her experience counseling patients whose love lives and marriages are a shambles because they refused to see what was right in front of them from the beginning of the relationship. Her book is getting a lot of media buzz, including a Vogue photo shoot and a guest spot on the Today Show.

However, it soon becomes clear Grace is in deep denial and has failed to heed her own advice. After the horrific murder of a mother at her son’s school, which leads to one shocking revelation after another, Grace must question everything she has held dear. Much of what the reader was told previously turns out to be only one perspective of the truth. Her entire life begins to slowly unravel.

All of the action takes place off stage and the reader lives most of this story in Grace’s head. The pace is slow with a lot of background information and details of Grace’s life, both past and present. Those who find it fascinating to live inside a dysfunctional character’s head, as I do, will love this story. While this isn’t a thriller in the strictest sense of the word, the sense of foreboding is very strong and I flew through the book once I got going. I found the ending a little too pat, and so the 4 stars instead of 5.

[Zoeytron · Rating 2 out of 5]

Clever title, but rather like a slap in the face when all is said and done.  This was a tepid slog for me, I kept thinking it would evolve into a rolling boil, but it did not even come close.  Rating is based solely on my level of enjoyment, not on the writing.  The slow pacing just killed it for me, and it seemed to take forever to read.

[Suz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many of us these days, I stumbled across this title from a screen adaption. Watching first I suppose I formed definite expectations, but happily will say I enjoyed the book more.

A therapist in her own little bubble she seems to have it all, perfect job, perfect husband, perfect son, perfect home. Dare I say it - perfect life. This will all be shattered when the ideals she has espoused for an entire lifetime come crashing down so terribly. A smart woman warning her clients against in the precise insidious situation she finds herself in. Grace has married a paediatric oncologist who has a way of ingratiating himself with such falseness that Grace seems to be the last to know.

A dead lover, utter lies and deception, families torn apart by a person so callously able to be all the things one only can dream about, and those things she warns about in her upcoming book entitled ‘You Should Have Known’ Tirelessly written between seeing patients in her private practice in the Upper East Side of New York, and being mum to lovely Henry, a quiet and mature boy.

This soon to be published book warns of the signs individuals should be on the look out before marriage, she is good with her patients and we see many internal observations and judgements placed onto her clients. This is a good juxtaposition we find her in, and the denial that begins to lift the more we learn about the crime committed by her husband, and combined lives built on lies over twenty years. The publicity is reaching serious levels, a piece for Vanity Fair, she is about to be the next big thing.

I loved the slow unfolding of the deviance, the denial of such a smart woman, and easy reading of a sordid tale. It was a quick read with lots of incredulity and astonishing moments. The detectives were interesting, often putting it back on Grace with many statements inferring how she should understand the mind of such a psychopath, and watching Grace begin to understand how life is to be from now on, and that how an individual can live under such pretence for a ridiculous amount of time.

A propulsive and compulsive read, an audiobook which I recommend, accessed through the State Library of New South Wales and the Indyreads platform.

[Melanie Garrett]

This is a hard one to quantify. For the first third I was teetering between 1 and 2 stars. While there is nothing wrong with having a main character who starts out as exceedingly shallow, signs of growth need to be showing much earlier on. But with Grace, there was almost no sign of hope. There was just no internal landscape or emotional scope - other than one-note self-pity. Unless you are deeply interested in what it is to be a smug, judgemental New York City private school mom with an all too predictable handbag fetish you may feel you have unwittingly wandered into a bit of a losing game here. The were only really two people in the novel I wanted to know about, and one was dead, and the other on the run for her murder.

And yet, there really is a lot of good stuff going on here. It is a great concept, and could really have been a corker of a thriller, but reading it, I just didn't take away any sense at all that the author wanted to be writing a thriller, or indeed set out to do so. She likes detail, and is not remotely interested in plot. In fact, almost all the 'plot' bits are delivered after-the-fact, with the main character ruminating on events the reader wasn't actually even present for.

So I suspect part of my problem with this novel was that it has been marketed as something it simply isn't. There is nothing thrilling here whatsoever. Not that there is anything remotely wrong with this - but if you pick something up because you are in the mood for a thriller, and instead get minutiae and screeds of introspection, which then is accessorised as a thriller (cliff hangers plonked down as conversational gambit at the end of the very long chapters) then is it any wonder that so many reviewers are talking about their frustrations as readers, rather than what they liked about the book?

Which is quite a shame really, because Jean Hanff Korelitz can certainly write, certainly has insights to offer, and I personally got a lot out of reading the final quarter of the book. Some have said they felt the ending didn't do it for them, but I am wondering if this is also about the expectations the marketing has set up. But once I had accepted this was not a thriller after all, and that what was on offer was a story of aftermath and an (albeit very, very slow) emotional transition I stopped skimming and was hooked. The ending did pretty much work for me, and *almost* created that sense the best novels provide of leaving you feeling, of course, it had to end this way. SPOILER ALERT: The thing which stopped it from working completely was the letter Grace receives having been a hoax, an attempt to 'fuck with her' as the detective puts it. Because up until then, I don't think there was ever any sense that anything that was happening to Grace was in any way about 'fucking with her' as it were, but more that she and Henry were unfortunate collateral damage. Indeed, the explanation offered in the letter that events had got out of hand while trying to protect them seemed far more tragically plausible. Personally, I also think it would have been a lot more emotionally satisfying if Grace's decision in the face of the letter had been what precipitated the finally discovery, as this would have anchored her emotional journey to an *action* of some kind.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this compelling portrait of a psychotherapist and her family, the eponymous You Should Have Known refers to a book written by relationship/marriage therapist, Grace Reinhart Sachs. Grace’s self-help/relationship book candidly opens up to women about their penchant to ignore signs of toxic partners. She identifies the red flags that one should detect when hooking up with a lifetime partner. Grace claims that most of us “know,” even from the beginning, when a partner isn’t right for us; too often we disregard the evidence in our quest to try and reconcile that other person into our lives. Fortunately for Grace, she has had 17 happily married years with Jonathan, a compassionate pediatric oncologist. Until one day, her life turns upside down.

Grace's book is on the verge of being published; already she has had interviews with different magazines and TV news shows. Jonathan is supportive, her practice thrives, and their twelve-year-old son, Henry, is a bright student at a private, prestigious middle school. They live in the New York apartment that Grace grew up in. Their lives are content and balanced. And, then, a tragedy throws Grace into the teeth of an emotional storm. Her life has convulsed, her world is tilted, her compass is in uncharted territory, and misaligned. She has only herself, her comfort zones (special places in NY that she has known since childhood, a rural farmhouse in Connecticut, eateries she frequents), and her beloved son. Now, she thinks, who should have known?

There’s a crime, but this isn’t a crime book or police procedural, despite some conspicuous detectives. Rather, this is a narrative about one woman’s examination of her life and her memories, with the threat of facing shame, humiliation, fear, and sorrow, and the horror of admitting that she may have failed to follow her own advice. Everything that Grace’s life is about--her life in New York, the safety of her son, her marriage and her practice--it is all in turmoil as she tries to uncover the truth of her husband, as she stands on the precipice of disaster and ruin. Most of her friends have withdrawn, or feel awkward to help. Some have gossipy curiosities.

The captivating intimacy created by Korelitz draws the reader into Grace’s state of mind. We are taken on a journey of her past, including the details of how she revisits her memories. Grace begins to question the truth of her perceptions, which produces a chronicle of retrospection. Although it is written in the third person, the narrative reads like a private tunnel into Grace’s soul. The journey thrusts her into accepting new disclosures from her childhood past, and questioning all she holds dear now.

" what do I know? And what do I not know? Whatever she knew, could verify, could comprehend-- that thing could remain in situ, at least for now. Anything that could not be witnessed or vouched for she would leave in the open, an isolated artifact to return to when her strength returned..."

My only complaint is that the ending was too tidy, too convenient. Korelitz rendered a full life that turned into something savage and messy. I expected hope and redemption, yes, but not a wholesale and facile conclusion. That is why I knocked it down a star and gave it 4. But this may not bother all readers. In any case, the prose, structure, and characters were superlative.

[Maria Espadinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Fatura


Já devia saber sim!...

Que a intuição guia e a mente segue!
Que a intuição escolhe e a mente compara, ajuíza, avalia, pesa prós, pondera contras e só então selecciona.

Porém não é isso que observamos!
O que observamos é uma intuição amordaçada, uma voz abafada por uma torrente mental ruidosa, por um BRUAÁ pensante e estéril ...
E a intuição é preterida... olvidada... e a fatura elevada!...

Há uma mente ignorante e convencida, socrática só pela metade, que nada sabe mas se nega admiti-lo, metendo o bedelho onde deve e não deve.
E a fatura aparece sempre e é cara!

Estamos bem tramados se permitirmos que seja a mente a comandar!

É pois isso que acontece nesta história!
Algo que tão bem sabemos, mas tantas vezes ignoramos!😉

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grace Sachs is living the perfect life. She is lucky enough to live in Manhattan in the apartment she grew up in with her husband Jonathan, a pediatric Oncologist at Memorial and her well behaved and musically gifted son Henry. She is on her son's private school fund raising committee and mixes with some of New York's wealthier people. She has her own business as a psychotherapist specialising in counselling couples and is on the verge of publishing a book on the insights she has gleaned from couples relationship. Titled "You Should Have Known" it puts forward the theory that people whose marriages don't work out have often ignored the early signs that something about their partner is wrong for them before committing to a relationship. So life is rosy for Grace with pre-publication photo shoots and interviews ...... until the day her husband goes missing and her whole world crashes down.

This is a well written novel and the characters of Grace and Henry are well done. Grace is someone I liked and could feel sorry for as her husband was a real master of pulling the wool over her eyes and keeping her in the dark. However, Jonathan himself is largely missing (from the novel as a character well as literally) and so is any suspense element to the novel. The first half of the book setting up the collapse of Grace's world was very good, but I was then expecting more of the details of what had happened to cause Jonathan to do what he did and disappear but this didn't happen and the middle of the book feeling somewhat flat with Grace removing herself and Henry from New York and only late in the piece finding out some truths about Jonathan. It was an enjoyable read about relationships and how we can fool ourselves but not really a thriller.

[Bkwmlee · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to take a little bit of a detour from the ARCs and library books that I’ve been reading to squeeze in this buddy read with one of my good friends. She was interested in reading this because she had heard that the book would be the basis for an upcoming HBO mini-series adaptation starring Nicole Kidman -- who is one of her favorite actresses -- and being the “informed watcher” that my friend is, she wanted to understand the backstory first so that she will be prepared when the series actually comes out (I’m actually the exact same way when it comes to TV series and movies, which is one reason why we’re such good friends, lol).

This is a novel that actually came out back in 2014 -- the story revolves around Grace Reinhart Sachs, a marriage therapist in New York City who seems to have the perfect life, with a smart and handsome husband (Jonathan) who is a respected doctor at one of the city’s biggest medical establishments and a teenage son (Henry) who is musically gifted, intelligent, and is a model student. In addition to living among the upper echelons of New York high society, Grace also has a forthcoming book that is the culmination of her career experience and quite possibly could make her one of the most sought after therapists in the city. One day, when tragedy strikes the family of a boy at her son’s school and Grace’s husband coincidentally goes missing around the same time, the perfect life that Grace had built for herself threatens to unravel right before her eyes. But the physical turmoil that she goes through pales in comparisons to the turmoil in her mind and in her heart, and soon, the question becomes whether she will be able to maintain her sanity and rebuild her life.

My first reaction after reading this book is that, at 400+ pages, it was way longer than it really needed to be. I normally don’t have a problem with big books like this but this particular one felt especially long due to the way it was structured. The first two-thirds of the book felt really slow and dragged out, mostly because the story would go off on various tangents every few pages, to the point that one simple scene could take an entire chapter to play out. Not only that, whenever there was dialogue between characters, it was almost always interrupted by Grace’s personal thoughts and memories (the narrative is told from Grace’s perspective) – so a conversation that might be 4 or 5 lines of dialogue, something that would take up at most a quarter of a page let’s say, ends up spanning over 20 to 30 pages. There was also a lot of “describing” of minutiae (for instance, several pages describing Grace’s office, from the color of her couch to the paintings on the wall and the backstory on both), details that I felt weren’t really necessary in advancing the plot and mostly made the story more tedious to read. Halfway through the book, I started to ask myself what the point of the story was, as plot-wise, nothing significant had happened – it was mostly pages and pages of Grace’s thoughts and the tangents she goes off on when someone says something that triggers a particular memory for her. Interestingly enough, in the last third or so of the book, the style seemed to shift in that the story went from slow and drawn out to very fast-paced, with one thing happening after another – it was almost as if the last third of the book was written by someone else entirely and not the same person who wrote the first two-thirds. I felt like the story was told in a very “roundabout” way, which made it a bit hard to follow and also exhaustive to read.

With all of that said though, the reason I rated this 3 stars and not lower (technically I’m between 3 and 3.5 stars on this one) is because, despite the convoluted structure, the way the story was written made me feel compelled to keep reading and to find out whether Grace would be able to put the pieces of her life back together. Character development-wise, I actually felt the author did a good job with the main character Grace in that, by letting us (the readers) into her mind and making us experience first-hand the mental and psychological breakdown that she endures as the result of her carefully-manufactured world collapsing around her, it presented an interesting, thought-provoking commentary about relationships as well as human behavior. Basically, I liked the premise of the story overall and even felt some sections were cleverly written (especially the parts that subtly juxtaposed what was happening to Grace with the advice that she was giving to her clients), but I wasn’t a fan of the story’s structure or its execution. When it comes to books, I’m really big on the “experience” of reading a book and for me, this one was a bit of a struggle, though I did get some food-for-thought out of it so in that sense, it was a worthwhile read.

Tying the book back to the TV series adaptation mentioned at the beginning of this review – in reading what is out there so far about the series, one thing I found interesting is that there seem to be characters in the series that were not actually in the book. Also, in addition to Nicole Kidman taking on the role of Grace Sachs, they also cast Hugh Grant in the role of her husband Jonathan – this is significant because in the book, Jonathan is a character that is only talked about but never actually appears…yet in the series, it seems that Jonathan as a character will have more of a presence than he did in the book. Both of these things lead me to wonder just how “faithful” this adaptation will be to the book -- but since the series is still in the works right now, I will withhold further judgement until the filming is actually completed and the series is released.

Overall, I feel this book is highly readable, but for the right audience. It does give some interesting insight on relationships, but I think the length of the book and the convoluted way it was written will probably deter some folks from picking this one up. I was actually tempted to abandon this one myself during the parts that I felt were especially slow, but of course I continued with it and it does pick up pace near the end. The reviews for this book seem to be a mixed bag so it’s probably a good idea to check out both the highly rated and lower rated ones to get a better feel for what to expect.

[Roxie (tokenfemale) · Rating 1 out of 5]

*sigh*

After nothing happened for five LONG chapters of blah blah blah details blah yawn blah Birkin.

Even when chapter six began by saying that "The end came...", nothing bloody happened. NOTHING! Every reveal was boring. Every plot twist was a limp noodle. I kept reading because I was hoping something, ANYTHING, would happen. But nothing ever did.

The MC was a boring, stupid, wishy-washy, moron. Aren't psychotherapists supposed to be great at asking the right questions? I wanted to punch her.

[Nicole Overmoyer · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a lot of things about You Should Have Known by Jean Hanff Korelitz that leave the reader, or maybe just me, conflicted. On the one hand, I absolutely didn't want to stop reading because I needed to know how things would turn out for marriage counselor Grace Reinhart Sachs. On the other hand, I absolutely loathed Grace Reinhart Sachs for about three-quarters of the book. This left me very confused as to why I cared what happened to her. Or maybe not so much confused, but guilty that I spent a long time hoping her perfect world would implode in on itself.

I don't know if Hanff Korelitz intended for a reader to be against the main character in this book, but I was.

Allow me to try and explain why I think I didn't like her.

First, and maybe this explains a lot of it, I can picture Grace Reinhart Sachs on The Real Housewives of New York. She's a rich woman, but not quite rich enough to never consider going on such a show. She's very much about keeping up with the Joneses, as it were. She clings for dear life to the things from her childhood, like the apartment she grew up in and now lives in with her husband and her son and the alumnae spot her son has at a ritzy private school. It's sweet, to a point. Of course, as any good RHNY cast member would do, she strives for more. What isn't so sweet is her fantastically naive ego, and I may have just made that phrase/diagnosis up.

Grace is a marriage counselor who wrote a book that nine people out of ten find aggressively judgmental. The gist of her book is basically that women should know better than to marry cheaters, abusers, gay men, etc. She says there is no such thing as love at first sight. She says that women should always be aware of their relationships and recognize that they might not know everything that's going on, much less approve of it.

Guess who should be the first person in line for a copy of this sage advice?

That's right - Grace herself.

She admits she fell in love at first sight, never to her clients and only occasionally to herself, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. Her husband, a pediatric oncologist - and she does love to tell people that he's a pediatric oncologist no matter how many times the words on the page say that she doesn't - isn't all he's cracked up to be. The iceberg, in other words, is huge. If Grace were the Titanic, her husband is the iceberg.

It's a slow collapse and every new revelation is like another block of ice chipping off or another pump room on the ship filling with water.

So why was I rooting against Grace, and I did so quite vociferously, when I should have been hoping for a survivor in the whole mess?

I've been thinking about this a lot since I finished the book a few days ago and the best I can come up with is this: I'm not an Upper East Side - and I'm fairly certain that's the geography that Grace liked to talk about - New Yorker. It seems like a microcosm environment with a culture all it's own. And I don't get that culture. Maybe even more than that, I was put off by what she wrote in her book. I'm one of the people I include in the nine out of ten who found it aggressively judgmental. It made me not like her, to tell the truth. When both of those things combined, I read the story to see someone I didn't like get what was coming to them.

I'm happy with the ending, though, actually very happy. Grace found out there was a very satisfactory world beyond her little New York bubble - she even discovered (to her delight and dismay!) that public middle schools in Connecticut are better than fancy private schools in New York - and it seems like she'll do well there.

All things considered, I really did like this book. It made got me riled up. I felt strongly about things in it. And I couldn't stop reading it.

(This review will be cross-posted on my blog - link on my profile page.)

I received a copy of this book through the Goodreads First Reads giveaways.)

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars ~I realized that I had this book after I recently read about an upcoming series based on the novel (called, The Undoing).

Grace Sachs is happily married and a successful therapist with a newly published book when she is shocked to discover terrible revelations about her husband of 20 years. The novel recounts her extreme emotion as she comes to terms with this realization and is forced to gradually sever one life and create another for her child and herself.

I was born and raised in “Kent Haruf country” so, the dishy portrayal of the private lives of the fancy ladies of NYC was irresistible (if inconceivable) reading for me. The novel is very well-written but somewhat tedious with details and too much inner dialogue to satisfy my preference for a stripped down writing style.

It was still a very compelling story and I plan to seek out other novels by this author. The new series will star Nicole Kidman and I look forward to checking it out.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grace Reinhart Sachs has got it all. The trendy New York apartment, a son enrolled in the best private school, an oncologist husband who specializes in pediatrics; the perfect marriage, the perfect life. In her own right, Grace, a couple's therapist, is the author of a book soon to be published called You Should Have Known. It's the book for all her clients suffering the demise of their partnerships. If they had only noted the early signs, they would have known their marriages were destined for failure.

Things are going so well that I'm beginning to think, nice but so what? Without warning the proverbial you know what hits the fan and all goes south, plunging Grace into a reality she could not have imagined. To tell you more would ruin this beautifully constructed psychological study of a marriage.

[Gloria (Ms. G's Bookshelf) · Rating 3 out of 5]

⭐️3.5 Stars⭐️
The Undoing is an interesting psychological thriller.

Set in New York, Grace Sachs is a therapist, she is married to Jonathan a paediatric oncologist and a man she thinks she knows, they have a young son named Henry aged twelve.

Grace is about to publish her first book called ‘You Should Have Known’ which ironically is a book on the subject of relationships focussing on a woman's initial intuition when she first meets a potential partner but a little 'outside the square' of the usual books on the subject.

When Grace makes some startling revelations after a woman, a mum from their son's private school is found violently murdered, her life begins to fall apart dramatically.

The story is quite a slow burn at the start but I enjoyed the plot which really heated up towards the end.

I am currently watching the HBO mini series that has been adapted from the book starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant and I’m up to episode three and there you go, it’s absolutely brilliant! I think they have done an amazing job turning it into a TV series...love, love, love!

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 out of 5 stars - "If a woman chooses the wrong person, he was always going to be the wrong person: that was all."

I loved this book, which surprises me because it's not typically the type of novel that strikes me -- a fan of suspense thrillers and historical fiction. The incredible power of this book comes from the voice of its protagonist in an almost stream of consciousness narration that grabs and holds the reader in thrall until the very end. I found myself marking up the pages, highlighting the passages that I'll be thinking about for days to come and will long to talk about with fellow bookish friends.

Grace Reinhart Sachs had it all -- a flourishing therapy practice focused on relationships with a book about to be published, a loving husband who worked as a pediatric oncologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and an adorable son named Henry. Until the day she didn't ...when her whole world came crashing down in the wake of something that she had never intuited nor had foreseen.

To say more about the nature of the plot and the revelations would spoil the read, so I'll just leave this by saying that I'd recommend this to any book club -- though a common tale of "love gone wrong" and certainly one of secrets and lies - it felt new and unique because Grace had to be drug kicking and screaming to the truth. How can anyone be so blind? Well, it's often said that we see what we want and hope to see and "doubt can be a gift." But when the truth comes to light, how you handle it makes you into the person who survives or who doesn't.

Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the e-book ARC to review.

[Bam cooks the books · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grace Reinhart Sachs is living the perfect life: she is a successful marriage counselor about to publish her first book of relationship advice entitled You Should Have Known; she has been married to Jonathan, a handsome pediatric oncologist and the love of her life, for 20 years; and they have a talented twelve-year-old son, Henry, who attends an expensive private school. But in a blink of an eye that life begins to unravel and it all begins with the brutal murder of a young woman, the mother of one of Henry's schoolmates. Is Grace's somewhat snarky marriage advice coming back to bite her? Should she have known?

Deciding to tell the story in third person perspective but entirely through Grace's experiences enhances the feeling of confusion about what is really going on. We never actually meet Jonathan throughout the book. Who is he really?

Strangely parts of this novel are compulsive reading while other parts tend to drag. And maddeningly, Grace seems to try to avoid as much of the painful truth as she can. But overall I thought the book was so interesting and well worth reading, exploring how well we can ever really know another person, especially if their intention is to deceive.

According to her bio, this is coming to HBO in the spring of 2020, titled The Undoing and starring Nicole Kidman, Hugh Grant, and Donald Sutherland!

**Jean Hanff Korelitz was one of the authors who appeared at the 1st Annual National Literary Festival held at St Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN, on November 8 and 9, 2019: https://www.saintmarys.edu/LiteraryFe...

[Emily M · Rating 1 out of 5]

I JUST CAN'T with this book anymore. I am 300 pages in and officially calling it quits. It takes a LONG TIME for this book to go anywhere and then when you think it's going somewhere, it decides actually not to instead. Plus there's just wayyy too much foreshadowing -- so much so that I don't feel like I need to read the rest of the book to know the ending. Sorry, is this severe?

I do think the book has a interesting premise, but the writing wasn't outstanding enough to make up for the fact that this book (which is packaged as a thriller, but perhaps is not, exactly) has a lot of pacing issues. I do think it also says an awful lot about how we (and not just therapists, who think they know everything about human behavior) judge the choices of others before we are willing to examine our own. And it also makes some interesting points about marriage. Like that it's scary and not always a good idea and that you should probably avoid it at all costs -- or maybe that's just just my own biased reading of marriage in general.

I can't say I'd recommend this, though I'm sure other people may have a different read on the book. Am I allowed to rate this if I didn't actually finish it? I'm doing it anyways.

[Tonkica · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

Grace Reinhart Sachs, psihoterapeutkinja, živi sređenim životom u visokim krugovima New Yorka. Odana je svom mužu dječjem onkologu, njihovu sinu Henryju i pacijentima za koje se skrbi u vlastitoj ordinaciji. Njezini su dani ispunjeni poznatim ritualima: živi u istom stanu na Manhattanu u kojem je odrasla, svako jutro šalje Henryja u istu elitnu školu koju je i sama pohađala, piše knjigu o vezama i brakovima, sudjeluje u aktivnostima svoje škole i dalje, jednostavno uživa u svom savršenom životu. Dok… sve to ne poljulja jedna nasilna smrt, muž koji je nestao bez traga i neprekidni lanac zastrašujućih spoznaja.

Cijeli osvrt pronađite ovdje: https://knjige-u-svom-filmu.webador.c...

[Crystal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I Should Have Known:

*that reading this was not going to be anything as surprising and fun and dark like Gone Girl
*that it is entirely from Grace's point of view
*that hardly any questions get answered about the missing husband. The ones that do are rather predictable
*that I really don't care about prestigious Manhattan grade schools and the parental drama that comes with them

Yeah, I'm disappointed by this one. :(

[Jayne · Rating 2 out of 5]

YOU SHOULD KNOW this about "YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN"......

If you lack time and/or patience.....this is NOT the book for you!

Although this book features a very compelling premise and protagonist, it is a very, very, very long book. (It is a 16-hour audiobook!). The author does a lot of "rambling" (aka "excessively long periods of dialogue and introspection") that should have been deleted by a skilled editor.... and, therefore, in addition to requiring a significant investment of one's time, this book also requires patience.

TRUE CONFESSION: I started listening to the audiobook last year and abandoned it after Chapter 2. Since I was intrigued by the book's plot summary, I tried listening again earlier this year (I forgot that I had attempted to listen to it last year) and, again, stopped listening after a few chapters because I could not handle the book's excessive verbiage and very, very, very slow pace. Some of the other reviewers mentioned that they were able to skim past some of the author's wordy prose but this is difficult to do when listening to an audiobook.

HBO's "THE UNDOING" is based on "YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN". I watched the HBO series in its entirety over the weekend and each episode was amazing. And after watching "THE UNDOING", I checked out "YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN" for the third time from Hoopla....and this time I was able to finish it. (Huff puff, huff puff!)

Although many details that were presented in "YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN" were changed in HBO's series, it was not the omission/addition of details that made "THE UNDOING" sooooo much better than "YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN". Instead, it was the pace. "THE UNDOING" really moved and was very engaging. As previously stated, "YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN" suffered from much too much dialogue and, at times, required great stamina/motivation to stay with the storyline.

Kudos to HBO's talented producers for having the foresight to see that "YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN"'had such great potential and for hiring such an impressive cast to bring "YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN"'s storyline to life.

[Melanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wavered between 2 (it was ok) vs 3 (I liked it) stars. I decided on 3 because I enjoyed the plot. However - there was way too much “reflection” from the main character. I felt it unnecessarily bogged the story down. I enjoyed the second half of the book the most and I did like how the author ended the story.

As a side note - I watched the first episode of the HBO limited series based on the book. They took so much liberty with the interactions of two of the characters that I’m not sure I want to continue. Darn it.