Seven years ago, Abigail Browning's honeymoon ended with the murder of her new husband, Christopher, on Mount Desert Island off the coast of Maine. Now, after all this time, Abigail has returned to the island. The reader is brought up to speed through a journal that Abigail kept, detailing all she remembered, all the events leading up to the actual murder. But after receiving the latest phone threat, she burns the journal and decides to return to the island to find for herself who killed her husband. She's no longer the young widowed bride; she is now a detective, her father being the director of the FBI. Chris himself had been an FBI agent and, while clues pointed to Chris's murder being connected to a burglary, Abigail and others do not believe that story.
Owen Garrison found Chris's body the night he was murdered. The Garrison family was tied tightly to the island’s history, as were Chris's family and the Coopers. Owen's own sister drowned many years ago while they were still young, and her death to this day is still an unsolved mystery. With this death always in the background, Abigail and Owen try to solve the identity of her husband’s killer. At the same time, the two feel a strong attraction to each other, adding a romantic angle to the plot.
There is a lot of tension throughout the story, as Abigail’s reappearance on the island seems to anger many of the locals. There are numerous characters in that help make the story absorbing, including the Cooper’s gardener, Mattie Young, who is an alcoholic hiding plenty of secrets from his employers, including the fact that he is blackmailing one of their own, Linc Cooper.
The Widow is a little bit convoluted, bogged down by too many characters with soap opera-ish lives. At the same time, these are the same characters that kept me reading, each having something interesting or mysterious about them that compels the reader to want to find out more about them. A good part of the book has a Gothic feel to it, which I appreciated, but I had a hard time getting into the story line. Readers will get some satisfaction once the mystery of Abigail's husband's murder is solved, but some may think the ending comes too abruptly. I didn't see it coming, but nor did I care by that point. The Widow isn't a bad read, but for diehard mystery/thriller fans, I wouldn't recommend it. For those looking for a quick read on a rainy day, however, The Widow is a book that will help pass the time.