(Reviewed by Cathy Carey)
Can a Premarital Agreement really justify murder?
His father, Henry, hung himself at the senior prom. His mother, Martha, was raped. Both were painfully shy and bullied throughout high school.
Martha’s story of survival began after she moved away from home and started college at Hartford University in Connecticut. Hank was born six months after she left home.
Hank developed into a fine young man and was a lot like his father: intelligent and geeky. He had a fascination with calculators and developed a business of fixing, programming and making new calculators at the age of nine. At age twelve he had his mother invest his hard earned money in a new stock called Intel.
He and his mother led a quiet modest life. After graduating with a computer science degree he went to work at Hartford IT company.
No one at the company would have ever guessed that the IT geek had enough money to buy the company he worked for. He bought his mom a house, paid cash for it and lived with her until he was forty one.
He never had any romantic relationships. He was all consumed with work and taking care of his mother. Hank was the perfect son, until…
A beautiful young girl came into interview for a job. She was smitten with Hank. However, she had so much emotional baggage with jealous rages and manic episodes that Hank had never experienced. Yet he loved her anyway. His life was about to be turned upside down.
The author takes you on a psychologically twisted roller coaster with this relationship alternating between what happened past to present. This leaves the reader gobsmacked at the end.
I immediately developed at attachment to Martha, poor Henry, and then to Hank. However, there were a lot of loose ends once he introduced the girl and her friends. I wish that the author tied it together better in the end. Also Martha needed to be incorporated better into the final chapters.
That said, I still highly recommend Love is Rich in Both Honey and Venom to anyone who enjoys an exciting psychological murder mystery. I couldn’t put it down.
