cover image You Sent Me a Letter

You Sent Me a Letter

Lucy Dawson. Corvus (IPG, dist.), $13.95 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-1-78239-622-2

In this labored tale from British author Dawson (Little Sister), Sophie Gardener, a woman on the cusp of marriage, wakes up one night to find a man sitting near her bed. The stranger hands her a sealed envelope and instructs her to open and read it to assembled family and friends at her 40th birthday party the next evening. Then he threatens her family if she fails to do as she’s told. In a panic, Sophie immediately concludes that Claudine Dubois, the ex-wife of her fiancé, Marc, is behind the intruder. Sophie turns for support to her sister, Alice, who intensifies the pressure by revealing that her birthday party is actually a surprise wedding arranged by Marc. A series of increasingly hysterical attempts by Sophie to avoid disaster and to keep secret a drunken tryst with Rich Hendersen, the husband of her best friend, precede the ceremony. More travails follow before Sophie eventually learns the bitter, albeit unlikely, truth. (July)