Die for You

DIE FOR YOU

Isabel, emotional, over-analytical, learns that her husband of five years is not who she trusted him to be. We've all heard that one before. Isabel Raine is a successful fiction author. Isabel's husband, Marcus, is a passionate lover but can be emotionally distant. Marcus seems to be missing as he didn't come home to their New York apartment. Everyone's response to Isabel was suspicion that he's at least having an affair or left her. However, Isabel suspects foul play and when she wakes up in hospital with head injuries after meeting FBI agents at her husband's office she decides to put to good use her creative writing, investigative mind to get to the truth. The fun begins..

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Do you know who you're sleeping with?

Die for You was thrilling and bittersweet, a book that I did not want to put down. I have never read anything by Lisa Unger so I was pleasantly surprised by this novel. The whole idea the story was constructed around (do you really know your spouse, do you know yourself?) and the wonderfully written characters really drew me in.
However, I also found that the story was almost too perfect, things just fell into place too easily. Isabel could have had a little more difficulty finding the information she needed, finding Marcus; marriages were almost too easily reconciled. I think some of the emotion that is naturally mired in the process of forgiveness was inarticulated.
Despite these criticisms, I enjoyed the story, felt Isabel's angst, and the bittersweet knowledge of their love despite the betrayal. The story covered the spectrum of infidelity and examined the difference of who we are, who we want to be and whether we are able to put aside our fears to make that leap. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys a good thriller.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Good Psycological Thriller - Possible Spoiler Alert!

Isabel Raines was a famous author married to Marcus a successful Software Developer. Her sister Linda, a successful photographer seems to have the perfect life married to Erik. While everything on the outside appears great, there are a great deal of secrets. Things get set off when Marcus disappears and Isabel gets a mysterious phone call from him. People working with Marcus are murdered and Isabel is attacked. Linda and Erik's marriage is a house of cards waiting to fall.

Isabel tries to find out what happens to Marcus and as she searches there is danger lurking everywhere and she finds that her life with Marcus was a total lie. The police immediately suspect Isabel and she does many unorthodox things in her pursuit of the truth. The author weaves an intriguing tale with a lot of psychological overtones which seems to relate to Isabel and Linda's father's suicide several years before.
Isabel's portions of the tale are told in first person, where everything else is in third person. This gives the reader a good view of everyone from all angles. I had a little problem with how several characters seem to practically ignore infidelities of their loved ones and this kept me from giving it a higher rating. It still is a good thriller that held me until the next to last chapter (there is an epilogue that doesn't seem to add much). Overall Four Stars.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Lisa Unger provides an engaging tale of spousal deceit

Novelist Isabel Connelly and high tech game designer Marcus Raines have been happily married for five years and seem deeply in love. Marcus leaves their Manhattan apartment for work after telling Isabel he loves her. He never made it to work nor comes home. Panic stricken, when she finally receives a call that she assumes was from him, she hears a terrified man screaming. She rushes to the police, but they offer nothing as they insist it is probably a nasty prank by her spouse.------------

Isabel rejects the official position as she believes her Marcus loves her and would not desert her. She goes to his office only to find the FBI raiding the place; in the melee she is knocked out. She regains consciousness in a hospital where she learns all of Marcus's associates are dead and he remains unaccounted for. She checks their finances only to find zero in their accounts. Police Detective Grady Crowe digs deeper into the background of Isabel's husband only to be shocked that Marcus Unger died years ago.---------------

Mindful of the Goldie Hawn movie Deceived, DIE FOR YOU is an exhilarating thriller starring a fascinating heroine who after the initial shock needs to know who her husband really is and why the deception. When the story line stays focus on disappearances and reactions to it, this is a super tale. However, when the plot contains unnecessary cul de sacs especially about the personal lives of support players, it loses momentum. Still overall Lisa Unger provides an engaging tale of spousal deceit.-----------

Harriet Klausner

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Wow!

This bbok is Ms Unger's best yet! As is so often done,she did not sacrifice rich characters with deep relationships for a racing plot. Ms Unger meshed both seamlessly. And, as i am writing this at 2am, I would also like to thank her for the dark circles under my eyes, which I will be sporting tomorrow!

Good

Enjoyed this book

Hard To Put This Down!

This is the story of a novelist, Isabel Raine, whose husband disappears and she launches into her own investigation to figure out what happened. Fiction writers make pretty good detectives. She loves her husband and does not hesitate to go looking for him even though it puts her in great danger. Die For You is a fast-paced novel about trust, love, marriage, forgiveness, betrayal and identity theft.

This is one of those books that is difficult to put down because of the mystery and suspense created from the start. I liked the insight the author gives into four different marriages, the excitement of the mob involvement, the trip to Prague and the theme of trust and forgiveness that runs through the book. The lesson taught in this book is to get to know someone well before you marry them!

riveting

Very good story of family deceptions finding out that people you love aren't always what they seem and some of it's pretty dark. It's also about forgiveness and moving on I am not going to spoil it for you all but I do recomend it. Lisa Unger uses this theme in a few of her novels but does it in such a way that the reader doesn't get the rehashed dejavu feeling.

More Plot - Less Prose

At the heart of this book, Lisa Unger has crafted a very good, potentially great, mystery - what would happen if one day, you realized that the person you were married to was a mirage. But while the whodunit winds its way through the book, it is slowed down, and too often stopped in its tracks, but the author's unending need to be deeply poetic. Despite being caught in what could and should be a rapid and breathtaking mystery, Unger's characters spend pages at a time navel-gazing, lamenting their fate - going on for so long that by the time they step out of their heads and return to the action, you've forgotten where they were. Indeed it seems that sometimes so have they.

Also bringing the action to a grinding halt is the completely unnecessary sub-plots. Neither of the sub-plots really add anything to the main action, and neither of them get resolved in any meaningful way, so I am at a loss to explain their presence. It is almost as if two, or more, books were merged together by accident.

The characters varied from those that were so very interesting (and almost without exception, completely underdeveloped) to the so very unnecessary. The only consistency in the character development seemed to be that the men playing the good guys were completely and utterly inept and at the mercy of every woman who came their way - and not in a good way.

On the whole, I wouldn't recommend it for others. However, I bought it as a vacation read (i.e.: quick and easy), and it filled that requirement admirably. It's a decent plane read, if you're on a long flight (nearly 500 pages)

Lisa Unger Never Let's You Down

Lisa Unger's writing is awesome, always keeps you catpured in the plot. This story was very different from her other books at it took place in a foreign country but I never wondered what the tie in was. She is a brilliant story teller. If you haven't read this or her other books I would definitely say run out and get the books. I was hooked since her first book, Beautiful Lies and have looked forward to reading all her books. BUY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hmmmm...

I was super excited about reading another Lisa Unger book. This one is okay...I think I just had a hard time connecting with the characters. Also, I felt that there was an sub-plot which wasn't necessary. I wish she (Lisa Unger) would have used the pages she used for this to futher develop the main characters/story.

Book was so so

This book was slow at times. The plot could have been better. I'm not sure I would purchase any other books by this author to read. It wasn't one of my favorites that I have read this year.

One of the best

One of the best books that I have ever read

You Think You Don't Know Your Husband....

In Lisa Unger's DIE FOR YOU, Isabel thought she knew her husband, until the night he didn't come home. Married to Marcus for five years, and except for one brief indiscretion by her husband, Isabel thought they were happy. After alternating between anger and panic all night, she finally gets a phone call from his cell phone- and hears a violent struggle and a man scream on the other end of the call.

A call to the police goes nowhere, as a husband who doesn't come home is not high on the priority list. Isabel goes to her husband's office, a successful high-tech game software company, to talk to his partner. The partner is evasive, angering Isabel. Before she can get any more information, the FBI raids the office. Confusion reigns, and Isabel is knocked out.

When she awakens in the hospital, she finds out that it wasn't the FBI, and several people were killed, including her husband's partner. Her apartment has been trashed, and all of the money she and Marcus had in the bank is gone. Isabel discovers that her husband conned her brother-in-law Erik out of his life savings as well.

Police Detective Grady Crowe is wary of Isabel's claims of ignorance of her husband's activities. More bad news arrives when it is discovered that her husband is not the real Marcus Raine- that man was murdered years ago, and it appears that her husband assumed his identity. Did he also murder the real Marcus Raine?

Isabel is determined to discover the truth about her husband. Crowe warns her against that, particularly when more people show up dead, and Isabel seems to be the one closest to the dead bodies upon discovery. Is she a victim or a murderer?

Unger writes a fast-paced thriller, and she uses the setting of New York City to good advantage. Anyone familiar with the city will recognize the spot in Central Park where a confrontation takes place, and the Upper West Side area where Isabel lives. A journey to Prague brings that city to life as well.

Some thrillers/mysteries sacrifice character for action, but Unger's characters are fully drawn. The family dynamic between Isabel and her sister Linda, Erik and their kids is realistic and interesting. Erik and Linda's relationship is loving, even though both make big mistakes that threaten that relationship. Even Detective Crowe and his partner have a good chemistry.

One thing bugged me though. Isabel's actions frequently put herself in danger, but also endanger her family. Isabel's quest to find out the truth about her husband caused her family great pain, and I couldn't understand that. Was her need to personally discover the truth about her husband worth the agony she put her family through?

Isabel also knew nothing about her and her husband's finances. She signed papers he put in front of her, and agreed to use her name on all the paperwork for his company. Could she be that naive, particularly since her father left her mother, sister and her broke when he killed himself. Yet her sister makes a similar mistake. Perhaps this is a cautionary reminder to the reader to always pay attention to your family finances.

I didn't understand Isabel, but maybe that is the point of the story. Maybe we never really know anybody, even the person sleeping next to you for five years. I give Die For You three and half stars because Unger kept me turning the pages when I should have been sleeping.

What if your husband wasn't who he claimed to be?

A bestselling writer and her software designer husband are living the ultimate urban dream. With a beautiful home in Manhattan, skyrocketing careers, and an extravagant lifestyle, they seemed to want for little. Except that when it came to Isabel Connelly and the man everyone knew as Marcus Raine, nothing was as it seemed.

Isabel and Marcus seem to have the perfect life until one day Marcus goes off to work, but doesn't come home. This sets Isabel on a quest to discovering who the man she married really was, and whether or not her whole marriage was based on a lie.

Really enjoyed how the book wasn't just from Isabel's point of view, but also featured her sister, Marcus, and even the lead detective as narrators. I liked sister Linda's side story, but could have done without Detective Crowe's drama as I didn't think it really added anything to the main story.

Isabel came across as a strong confident woman who, like a lot of New Yorkers, is a little arrogant in her belief that she can find out the "truth" instead of leaving things up to the police. But I thought that her decisions and impulsiveness were believable, and understood most of her motivations. While Isabel does make some startling discoveries and suffers the consequences, I was satisfied with the way things played out in the end.

I had never read anything by Lisa Unger before, but think that she's an excellent writer and am looking forward to reading more of her work. Four stars!

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