Book info

• Title The Bigamist
• Author Mary Turner Thomson
• Year 2007
• Genre Memoir

When Mary met Will Jordan online, she was a single mother who’d given up trying to find Mr Right. And yet here he suddenly was: articulate and attractive, with a fascinating background. Soon they were in love, and when he proposed after a month it seemed recklessly romantic. Caught up in a whirlwind, Mary accepted that Will’s work often took him away from home, out of contact. She was his rock, supporting him emotionally when a misunderstanding led to criminal charges, and even selling everything when blackmailers threatened to kidnap their children. Together, they took on the world. And then one day the phone rang, and a woman introduced herself as ‘the other Mrs Jordan’...

Thoughts

This book has been around for a while and been revised a few times, but fundamentally the story doesn’t change - Mary tells her story of being the victim of a bigamist who defrauded her of hundreds of thousands of pounds. It’s well written and highlights just how easy it would be to be manipulated by a smooth-talking guy who did what Will did, but I do wonder about how deep into debt one might go for their other half. You don’t know until you’re in the situation, of course, and having read this, it’s a good warning about staying aware of the signs of manipulation.

Rating: 3 / 5