A domestic-suspense novel with fascinating relational dynamics and a compelling ending that will have you tempted to re-read the whole book in a different lens. The Soulmate is my personal favorite book I’ve read by Sally Hepworth. The characters are well-crafted and the narrative structure added an interesting element to the plot reveals.
The Characters
Pippa and Gabe Gerard are married and have two daughters, Freya and Asha. They recently moved to a coastal town into a house at the top of a cliff. Gabe is a stay-at-home dad in the present timeline, though he has held different jobs in the past. Pippa’s sister Kat and her wife Mei live nearby. Mei and Gabe were formerly co-workers.
Amanda and Max Cameron are married and childless. Amanda met wealthy Max when she was waitressing an event he was at. They have been married for over two decades when the events of the book take place.
The Plot
Pippa and Gabe Gerard have recently moved their small, happy family to their dream home in a sleepy coastal town set at the top of a cliff. The cliffs are beautiful and dangerous, and they learn after moving in that they are a popular destination for those looking to take their own lives.
Over the past year since they moved in, Gabe has taken on the role of the helper to the lost souls who come there. He has saved several lives, spending hours talking to the individuals until they are ready to come back off the ledge to safety.
Until one day, a woman comes to the cliffs and Gabe isn’t able to save her. In a twist of fate, this woman isn’t a random stranger. Her name is Amanda Cameron, and it turns out Pippa and Gabe knew her. When Pippa learns who the woman was, she begins to replay the scene over and over in her mind, trying to make sense of it.
Gabe is her soulmate, after all… would he lie to Pippa? As details emerge, the dynamics between the Gerards and the Camerons become more twisted. What really happened to Amanda Cameron? And will the survivors be able to live with the truth when it is revealed?
The Structure
Told in alternating timelines to before and after the death of Amanda, The Soulmate is a fascinating character-study in a beautiful and terrifying setting. Chapters are narrated by both Amanda and Pippa, and we learn more about each woman—how they met their partner, what drew them to him, and what their life has been like since. The timelines and different perspectives unfold until the shocking and emotional conclusion.
My Thoughts
I really love Sally Hepworth’s writing and The Soulmate might be my favorite book I’ve read by her. I’ve seen some readers talk about whether they expected more or less from the twists based on early reviews so I want to talk a bit about the genre. The Soulmate is full of twists and turns throughout the book that cause the reader to rethink their assumptions about the story and the characters at each turn. I think some readers of psychological thrillers expect every twist to be jaw-dropping and “WTF?!” style twists, and those are a lot of fun.
What I would say is that isn’t Sally Hepworth’s style. Her books are more suspenseful, domestic fiction in style. Her twists tend to occur from learning new information that alters your perspective on what you think is happening and where the book may go. They are real life type twists (though heightened), and they are dropped in as secrets revealed, or new information learned. They come through the delicate and complicated weaving of narratives. They are explosive in their impact on characters you’ve grown to love, because they change the direction of the story. Her ending twists tend to be delicious morsels that round out the theme of the book in a way that satisfies the broader message of the story.
The Soulmate revolves around two couples, and the book opens with the death of Amanda, and then explores how these two couples knew one another and how their stories are intertwined while also separate. Pippa and Gabe take the bulk of the story, because we not only learn their past and how they came to meet and grow their family, but we are also watching them deal with the fallout of the incident on the cliff. Amanda and Max are a secondary though equally compelling story that begins with Amanda’s death and the questions surrounding it, then backtracks to their very beginnings.
Both relationships are immensely complicated and beautifully messy. These feel like real couples—ones you’d know and maybe even be friends with. Pippa and Amanda are very different characters, as are Max and Gabe. I enjoyed both narrative but I found Amanda’s story particularly compelling. Never forget the title of the book is “the soulmate”—but part of what we are seeing unfold is what that really means in the lives of these four people.
The characters and relationships are expertly developed. Each twist and turn changed what I thought was happening. By the end, I was actually less concerned about the answer to Amanda’s death that sparked so much of the events of the book than I was about the people and their stories. The ending was satisfying, emotional, and compelling. The epilogue rounded out the story in just the right way. A must-read for fans of this style of book!
The Ending
I loved the way this book ended and I’ve started using spoiler shortcode so I can share a bit more about my thoughts on the book in more depth. If you did not read The Soulmate yet, do not open the dropdown! I highly recommend finishing the book first and coming back to this after you are done. Consider this your warning!
Why did Amanda go to the cliff? (spoilers)
When Max proposed to Amanda, he told her he will never have children. She agreed on the condition that he could promise her total fidelity. Amanda’s father was unfaithful to her mother and this was very humiliating and sad for her growing up—she can live without kids if Max promises to remain faithful. Over the years Amanda falls deeply in love with Max, and it makes her worry more about his fidelity. She keeps an eye on him as best she can, but there is one work laptop she can never access.
One evening she finally accesses it and through a series of snooping, she finds CCTV footage from his office that show him and Pippa having an intense conversation. Pippa and Max kiss and the footage ends. Amanda puts the footage on a flashdrive and goes to confront Pippa about what she saw. She leaves the footage up on the laptop in lieu of a note so that Max knows she discovered he broke their promise.
What is the backstory between Gabe and Pippa? (spoilers)
Gabe and Pippa meet when she is working as a dogwalker and he is a groomsman in a wedding. They marry two months later. When Freya is born, Pippa experiences postpartum depression. Gabe is her savior during this time, helping her to feel better. We learn through this (and the people Gabe saves from the cliff) that he has a gift with helping others in dark moments.
However, Gabe has his own mental health struggles. After the birth of their daughter, Pippa confronts Gabe after he stays out overnight with no communication. Gabe confesses that he cheated on her with a bartender and he wants to seek help. The psychiatrist diagnoses him with ADHD, and for a time the medication seems to help.
Later, Pippa and Gabe learn that the woman Gabe had cheated with has passed away from an overdose, leaving a child behind. The child is Asha and she is only about 6 months younger than Freya (meaning Gabe cheated on Pippa during her postpartum depression). A DNA test confirms Asha is Gabe’s daughter, and Pippa and Gabe make her a part of their family and treat her as her own child.
How do their stories intertwine? (spoilers)
Max’s brother Harry took his own life many years ago, and the mental health issues that his brother and other family members experienced are why he never wanted to have children of his own. Just before Harry’s death, he got his girlfriend pregnant. She dies of an overdose years later Max tracks down her child.
At the end of the book, we learn the child is Gabe. Max never tells Gabe about their familial connection, but he does want to help him any way he can. He pays off the house when Gabe’s mother dies. He hires Gabe to do landscaping work, then offers him a job with his company.
At first, Gabe does well in his role, but later he becomes more erratic. Max has engaged in work with a man named Arthur Spriggs to launder money (presumably at the advice from Gabe). When Max tries to get out of the arrangement, Spriggs breaks into their home. Gabe and Max’s bodyguard kidnap Spriggs and Gabe accidentally shoots him.
Meanwhile Gabe’s mental health declines again. Pippa notices Gabe came home from work covered in blood one night. She calls Max (who she knows as Gabe’s boss) and goes to ask for help. Max tells Pippa he fired Gabe weeks earlier. Pippa kisses Max, but he gently turns her down saying he loves Amanda. Pippa is embarrassed and we learn they never slept together though Pippa told Gabe they did. Max gets a call that Gabe was taken to the hospital.
At the hospital, another psychiatrist evaluates Gabe and diagnoses him with bipolar disorder. Left untreated, this has caused much of Gabe’s erratic behavior. Pippa asks the doctor about the chances one or both of their children may inherit it and he confirms there is a hereditary component. Later, we see a flashback where Max confesses to Amanda that his brother took his own life after a years-long struggle with bipolar disorder. This is why he never had kids of his own and did his best to help Gabe.
Gabe and Pippa decide to leave Melbourne and settle at the house near the cliffs.
How does it end? (spoilers)
Amanda encounters Gabe and tells him about what she saw on CCTV. Gabe confirms that Pippa and Max slept together a year ago (Gabe doesn’t know Pippa lied). Amanda is crushed. They struggle over the flashdrive and Amanda falls to her death. At the time, Pippa is unsure whether Gabe pushed Amanda.
Max confronts Gabe to learn the truth about what happened to Amanda at the cliff. Max calls the police and confesses to the murder of Arthur Spriggs (even though we know Gabe was responsible for that) and goes to visit Gabe and Pippa. Pippa has found the flashdrive and brings it to the cliff where Max and Gabe are having a confrontation.
Gabe tells Max about the moments before Amanda’s death. Amanda told Gabe that Max is her soulmate. She falls from the cliff and Gabe is unable to catch her. Max thanks them for telling him and takes the flashdrive, which he crushes with his shoe and throws off the cliff. Then, saying Amanda was his soulmate too, Max steps off the cliff to his death, unable to live without her.
One year later, we learn Gabe and Pippa have divorced but have a healthy co-parenting relationships with Freya and Asha. They stayed in the coastal community but sold the house on the cliffs. Pippa has a new love interest. In the closing scene, Pippa realizes that she never needed Gabe to bring light to her life, she can do that herself.
My thoughts on the ending (spoilers)
For a lot of the book, it seemed like this was the story of Gabe and Pippa—the titular soulmates who are doing everything they can to overcome the mental health struggles that seem to be working against them. Towards the end of the book, Pippa’s family begin to tell her that they continue to move to be close to her and Gabe because they are worried about Pippa. In the epilogue, we learn that Pippa and Gabe have divorced but they still maintain a great relationship with eachother and their kids.
Pippa realizes that she and Gabe blamed his mental health for their problems. But in reality, the problem was Gabe’s behavior and his choices that continued to strain their marriage and lives. Pippa realizes that even though she loves Gabe, they are not soulmates. They are two people who have a beautiful family but aren’t meant to work together. She spent much of her marriage thinking that Gabe gave her light and life in addition to the dark moments, but she was always capable of doing that herself.
Hepworth does a brilliant job with Gabe, because while we see the toll his mental health takes on his and Pippa’s marriage, we also see glimpses of his superpowers with others. Gabe will spend hours with those suffering to try to help them. He is a wonderful dad to Freya and Asha. He wants Pippa to be happy and find the highs that he experiences. Gabe is deeply flawed, but it is easy to see why Pippa loves him.
The true soulmates end up being Amanda and Max. I found the end of their story heartbreaking and beautiful. I wish it didn’t end with them both dying, but we see Amanda stuck in a sort of in-between following her death that she is released from when Max takes his life to be with her. We are left to assume they pass over into whatever happens in the afterlife together. Ultimately all of the signs we had that something shady was happening with them was largely due to Gabe. Mental health and bipolar disorder are a demon that wreaks havoc on these characters.
As I mentioned, there is no jaw-dropping twist that flips the story on it’s head at the end, but there are lots of small twists along the way that were so compelling. The biggest twist to me was learning that Gabe and Max were related all that time. It made so much of the story fall into place, such as why Max continued to try to help Gabe when he was destroying his business, and why Amanda thought Max was being shady when really it was Gabe who he was protecting. I left the end of this book satisfied, humbled, and reflective about the themes of the book. This is one I plan to reread, because there is so much to take from it.
About the Book (Goodreads)
There’s a cottage on a cliff. Gabe and Pippa’s dream home in a sleepy coastal town. But their perfect house hides something sinister. The tall cliffs have become a popular spot for people to end their lives. Night after night Gabe comes to their rescue, literally talking them off the ledge. Until he doesn’t.
When Pippa discovers Gabe knew the victim, the questions spiral…Did the victim jump? Was she pushed?
And would Gabe, the love of Pippa’s life, her soulmate…lie? As the perfect facade of their marriage begins to crack, the deepest and darkest secrets begin to unravel.
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