Video Book Review: The Wife Between Us, Plus Book of the Month Club Unboxing
Watch my video book review of The Wife Between Us on my Read Remark booktube channel.
The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
Published January 2018
St. Martin’s Press
February is for lovahs!
And as I am wont to do, I propose we celebrate the month in contrarian fashion by reading a book with the absolute opposite spirit of the season. Much like I did when presenting odes to dysfunctional families for Thanksgiving.
So, in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, let’s look at a book about love gone terribly wrong. Enter The Wife Between Us.
We meet two women in love with the same man, Richard. Nellie is the affectionate young pre-school teacher, smitten with her fiance. The only dark cloud over their love is Nellie’s mysterious past. She’s nervous and jumpy at the thought of being alone, at what dark surprise could be waiting around the corner.
Vanessa is the scorned ex-wife. She looks upon Nellie and Richard’s love with distaste and suspicion. Having been out of work for ten years while married to Richard and living the rich housewife life, she now has a difficult time rejoining the real world and holding down steady employment.
Simultaneously lovelorn and burned, Vanessa is increasingly worried for Nellie as the wedding date gets closer.
And then there’s a twist.
A big, twisty twist that turns the story on its head and precludes me from summarizing the book any more from this point forward, lest I spoil it.
Instead of the surprising, mind-bending twist like the one in Gone Girl, though, it comes off as a bit obnoxious here.
Ultimately, The Wife Between Us is bogged down by too many rabbits and too many hats. There’s a twist in the middle, a twist at the end, and then, out of nowhere, another twist at the very end.
The twists don’t really add anything valuable to the story. Rarely mentioned characters and storylines are magically resurrected just for the sake of eking out one more gotcha. It eventually reads like one flash bang after another, devolving into a series of tricks.
Still, The Wife Between Us is mostly an enjoyable read. Eventually, though, it tries a little too hard to be a little too clever and sacrifices the story in the process.
I bought this book through Book of the Month Club. Though this is an unsponsored post and I paid for my membership like everyone else, you can click this link to create your own account and I’ll get a referral credit for free stuff!
