The Invisible Husband of Frick Island

Score: 4/5 Bookmarks

Thank you to Berkley for gifting me a review copy of The Invisible Husband of Frick Island by Colleen Oakley.

Piper Parish lives on a tiny little island, where they don’t even have internet or cell service. She goes about her daily routines, meeting her husband at the docks after work, going out for a meal etc. There’s just one thing that’s peculiar with all of that. Her husband died in a boating accident a while ago, but everyone on the island, including Piper, just carries on as if he’s still there next to her.

Anders Caldwell gets sent over from the mainland to cover a small story for the paper he works at, but upon returning home he gets an anonymous email saying that he’s missed the real story. He goes back to investigate and ends up spending all his free time out on the island.

The premise of this book is just so interesting and it definitely hooked me right away. The book deals with grief, loss, community, and mental health, which are all quite heavy topics but the author also makes us laugh and parts of the story are just so heartwarming you’ll want to hug the book. It is a bit of a slow burn but I was pretty hooked and didn’t want to put it down once I started. I loved all of the characters on the island, and the author painted such a vivid picture I really felt like I was there.

There’s also a healthy dose of mystery throughout the story, and some romance as well, so it’s hard to classify it into just one genre. It was refreshing to read something so different to anything else I’ve read lately. I definitely recommend you check this one out if you haven’t already!

Synopsis:

Sometimes all you need is one person to really see you.

Piper Parrish's life on Frick Island—a tiny, remote town smack in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay—is nearly perfect. Well, aside from one pesky detail: Her darling husband, Tom, is dead. When Tom's crab boat capsized and his body wasn't recovered, Piper, rocked to the core, did a most peculiar thing: carried on as if her husband was not only still alive, but right there beside her, cooking him breakfast, walking him to the docks each morning, meeting him for their standard Friday night dinner date at the One-Eyed Crab. And what were the townspeople to do but go along with their beloved widowed Piper?

Anders Caldwell’s career is not going well. A young ambitious journalist, he’d rather hoped he’d be a national award-winning podcaster by now, rather than writing fluff pieces for a small town newspaper. But when he gets an assignment to travel to the remote Frick Island and cover their boring annual Cake Walk fundraiser, he stumbles upon a much more fascinating tale: an entire town pretending to see and interact with a man who does not actually exist. Determined it’s the career-making story he’s been needing for his podcast, Anders returns to the island to begin covert research and spend more time with the enigmatic Piper—but he has no idea out of all the lives he’s about to upend, it’s his that will change the most.