Swan Huntley intimately explores the psyche of a 43-year-old, still single, affluent New Yorker in her first novel, We Could Be Beautiful. The owner of an upscale handmade stationery shop, Catherine West easily affords high-class fashions, a swanky apartment in the West Village, a personal trainer and masseur. Yet, despite her extravagant lifestyle, self-conscious Catherine feels terribly incomplete, like a failure, until she meets handsome and striking William Stockton, a widower and independently wealthy investment banker in his 50s, at an art gallery opening. "There was something familiar about him," Catherine says of their first encounter. "Maybe he looked like an actor, or maybe he was just one of those people who looked familiar to everyone, or maybe his dry-cleaned scent reminded me of home." Catherine and William learn they share a love of fine art and a history--they come from the same privileged societal class, and their parents had been friends years earlier. "I trusted him immediately," Catherine tells the reader.
The couple's attraction is instant and their courtship intense and all-consuming. Catherine is captivated by William's charm and sensitivity, although he steers away from talk of the past--his wife died of breast cancer and his parents perished together in a car accident. William, attentive and a good listener, sets Catherine surprisingly at ease, as she shares feelings about her father, who died of a heart attack, and her mother, Elizabeth--a very difficult, headstrong woman--whose Alzheimer's had progressed "to the point where the task of living alone was beyond her." The hard decision of placing Elizabeth in a home was made by Catherine and her younger sister, Caroline, who forfeited an artist's life to become a wife and mother of three children. The two sisters are opposites, but close, and they regularly visit their mother, who slips in and out of forgetfulness.
When Catherine tells Elizabeth about William, and inquires as to what she might remember about him and his family, her mother's curt, agitated response is jarring. Catherine and her sister blame Elizabeth's reaction on her disease, and William later admits that Catherine's mother might have an issue with him because, as a boy, he was once a guest in their home and broke an expensive vase. The explanation seems plausible as William and Catherine move in together and begin planning their wedding. However, their blissful romance is marred by deepening revelations and suspicions, especially once Catherine discovers an old diary her mother kept and a letter from a former nanny, which may shed light into Elizabeth's troubled reaction to William.
Aspects of deception and greed are suspenseful undercurrents that propel this well-plotted, seductive psychological thriller. Huntley has created a riveting yet flawed heroine in whom readers will eagerly invest as she is forced to unravel the truth about a man who seems too good to be true and a shrouded past that may hold the key to her future. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines
Shelf Talker: A wealthy single woman falls hard for a handsome, charismatic and attentive older man who may--or may not--be harboring secrets.