The Wife Between Us

Source: Barnes & Noble

The Wife Between Us is a 2018 thriller written by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. It was published by Pan Macmillian. The New York Time Book Review called it “a fiendishly smart cat-and-mouse thriller”, Glamour’s review stated “Buckle up, because you won’t be able to put this one down” and Publishers Weekly referred to it as “jaw dropping. Unforgettable. Shocking”.

A one-sentence description of the plot is that wealthy man’s jealous ex-wife becomes obsessed with her replacement, a younger, more beautiful woman he’s about to marry. Many other reviews cite a very compelling description from the book itself:

“When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.

You will assume you are reading about a jealous ex-wife.

You will assume she is obsessed with her replacement – a beautiful, younger woman who is about to marry the man they both love. 

You will assume you know the anatomy of this tangled love triangle.

Assume nothing.”

While I won’t begrudge anyone’s opinion, I can’t say I fully agree with the reviews I’ve mentioned above. The narrative is captivating at first. Unfolding through alternating POVs between Vanessa, Richard’s ex-wife, and Nellie, his young fiancé, the first half of the novel reads very well. The suspense builds as Vanessa gets more desperate and makes her way closer to confronting Richard’s new fiancé. Nellie’s fear about a woman who can’t seem to leave her alone, or move on with her life is palpable. The tension continues to build and build to the point where you wonder exactly what will happen when Nellie and Vanessa cross paths.

Then, the twist happens. Halfway through the narrative, a first twist is revealed. It shifts the narrative so that the reader is forced to reevaluate everything occurs up to that point. Unfortunately, the first twist is where the story falls apart. All of the tension built up to by that point washes away and the novel becomes a fairly adequate, by-the-numbers, drama. I would barely call it a thriller since, after that first twist, there’s very little suspense going on. More twists follow, each meaning less and less in terms of the narrative.

The novel is over four hundred pages, but there’s a lot of nothing that happens. Some of the filler in the story, or sidebars to explain certain details, are probably meant to make later twists mean more, or ramp up tension fail to do so. The story doesn’t need to go from one massively important scene or revelation to another, but way too much of the second half of the book is taken up by Vanessa reflecting on “what went wrong” with her marriage, which isn’t hard to figure out.

The novel is very trope heavy. Vanessa is a divorcee living a sad existence after her marriage falls apart. As soon as the divorce happens, her whole life loses meaning and she winds up living with her aunt and working in retail. Nellie is a naïve girl who’s caught up in this whirlwind romance with a successful businessman who gives her everything she could ever want. Richard is suave, powerful and lures Nellie in, despite hiding a secret. My biggest complaint when it comes to tropes is in Vanessa’s behavior towards Richard’s new fiancé. Her actions depict her as a crazy ex-wife which makes it even harder for her to pull off the one thing she’s trying to do. I’m really tired of reading the crazy ex-wife trope or the use of mental illness (its implied by Richard that Vanessa’s mentally ill because her mother was) as a plot device to explain why a character shouldn’t be trusted.

I think my main issue with this novel is how much hype surrounded it. The book was recommended to me by a coworker who claimed I’d enjoy it if I enjoyed Gone Girl. More than one book this year has been pitched to me in the same manner. I heard the same sales pitch last year about a number of books. I feel like the phrase “the next Gone Girl” is thrown around too liberally. Gone Girl was a fantastic thriller. Far too many subpar thrillers published in the following years are equated to it, and I for one think the comparison does an injustice to Gillian Flynn’s work. By saying The Wife Between Us is on the same level, I began reading with very high expectations, and was ultimately disappointed by the story I wound up reading.

The Wife Between Us is a good book, it isn’t fantastic and the narrative treats the plot twists like they are smarter than they really are. If someone asked me “is this book good”, I’d say yes. If I was asked “would you recommend it”, I might say yes, depending on my mood.

Rating: 3 stars.

Behind Closed Doors

Source: Amazon

Behind Closed Doors is a 2016 novel by B.A. Paris. It was published by St. Martin’s Griffin and was both a New York Times and USA Today bestseller. According to the description, it is a “psychological thriller you can’t miss!”

The novel focuses on Grace and Jack Angel. He’s a well-respected attorney focusing on domestic violence victims, while she’s a homemaker. From the outside they seem to have it all. As a tagline on the cover asks however, is this the perfect marriage or the perfect lie? Obviously, with a question like that posed, the answer becomes obvious. Things with the Angels are far from perfect, Jack is not the benevolent attorney, dedicated to saving women from their abusers that he seems to be. The novel centers around Grace trying to figure out what to do about her husband and how to remove herself, and her vulnerable sister Millie, from his sphere of influence.

The narrative unfolds in two timelines: past and present. This shows how Grace meets Jack and they get together while also contrasting it with the life she’s now living. The first chapter, which depicts a dinner party the Angels are hosting, does a fantastic job of filling the reader with a sense of doom and dread. Within a few pages, Grace’s actions and behaviors reminded me of The Stepford Wives. She’s the perfect hostess, the perfect cook, dinner goes down without a single mistake or flub, but at the same time, there’s an underlying fear of what would happen if dinner wasn’t perfect, if she wasn’t the charming hostess. I don’t like using other works to describe a feeling I get, but Stepford Wife was the only way I could describe it. Any work that invokes that comparison instantly gives the impression that either something is about to go horribly wrong, or it already has.

While the beginning creates a sense of dread, once it becomes clear the secret that’s being kept, the rest of the suspense drops off until the climax of the story. The tension in the first few chapters isn’t carried forward as effectively as I would’ve liked. Grace’s desperation is well-crafted and as the story progresses, the feeling of helplessness convinces the reader, or at least this reader, that she might not be able to get away. I’m not sure if I would quite qualify it as a thriller, mostly because there isn’t enough suspense. The actions of Grace and Jack propel the story forward, as opposed to a building up of tension.

As I alluded to earlier, and as the novel makes clear, Jack is hiding a huge secret. I will admit that the secret Jack hides and his motives aren’t quite what I predicted they might be when I read the synopsis of the book, I didn’t completely miss the mark. I went into the book expecting Jack’s secret to be that he’s a domestic violence attorney who, ironically, beats his wife. I expected him to be an abuser who hides behind the façade of someone advocating for abuse victims. That isn’t what his secret is, but he chose his profession deliberately and it isn’t to help others. Another thing I did not expect was the importance Millie, Grace’s 17-year-old sister with Down Syndrome, played in the story. She ended up being a much more important character in the conflict than I anticipated. Millie is smart, she’s resourceful and, despite her dislike of George Clooney, which has a purpose in the story, she’s a good character. Behind Closed Doors is one of the few books have read that has characters with Down Syndrome or another developmental disability that are well-written and multifaceted.

Now, it’s time to discuss some parts and elements that I wasn’t a fan of. There are two chief complaints that I haven’t touched upon yet. One is relatively minor, another related to a huge aspect of the story and plot. My minor complaint is about clichés in this type of work. It’s a psychological drama about the relationship between two people. As an easy way to show that Jack is a psychopath, and how psychopathic he is, he gets Grace a puppy and later kills it. This is the fourth book I’ve read this year where the first sign that the abusive or psychotic husband is abusive or psychotic is that he kills the dog. It does prove Jack’s a monster, but there were plenty of other, more creative, less obvious ways, to show that. Now, to my main complaint, Jack is apparently a supergenius, or psychic. By the time Grace learns the truth about him, he’s already planned for any and every possible contingency to make sure she can’t leave. Even events that are seemingly out of his control, he’s accounted for. The narrative shows only Grace’s perspective, so some aspects might be amplified for dramatic effect because she’s so scared, but his ability to predict any and everything that could happen gets a little annoying. Another thing I found incredibly frustrating is the fact that no one questions his behavior about certain things. No one apparently finds it weird that Grace can’t even go to the bathroom in a restaurant unless he waits outside the door for her. Not every character dismisses it, but far too many chalk it up to them being “so in love”. That behavior, and everyone’s dismissal of it, is part of why Grace is so desperate but it isn’t realistic in the way some of his other behavior is.

The central story is compelling. The twists and turns the story takes are also worth complimenting. Jack is a one-dimensional evil man, but that’s all he needs to be. Grace and Millie are both well-rounded and while I didn’t have a great opinion of Grace at first, as the story unfolds, her behavior had me saying “you’re an idiot, just leave” less and understanding her actions more. Behind Closed Doors is a great book, it’s not a fantastic one. I would recommend it but I don’t see myself gushing about it or insisting that everyone I know read it immediately.

Rating: 3.3 stars

One of Us is Lying

This post contains affiliate links. This means when you follow a link and make a purchase, I make a small commission at no additional cost to you, the customer.

One of Us is Lying is a young adult novel by Karen M. McManus. It was published in 2017 by Random House. Everyone I know who has read it describes the premise as “The Breakfast Club” meets “Pretty Little Liars” which is a pretty on the nose depiction. The book can be purchased here from Bookshop.org.

The non-spoiler-y summary is as follows: On a Monday afternoon, five students, a brain, a beauty, a criminal, an athlete and an outcast, walk into detention. An hour later, only four walk out. Simon, the outcast and the creator of a gossip app about the school, dies during detention. It’s soon revealed that his death was no accident. The four students in detention with him are the prime suspects and everyone has a motive. More people wanted Simon gone than didn’t.

What unfolds is a complex murder-mystery taking place in a modern high school. One of the strongest points of the book, and the most appealing, is this backdrop of a suburban high school. Unlike traditional mystery novels, a la Sherlock Holmes, the investigation takes place in our time. Simon’s death gains national attention and the investigation unfolds surrounded by, and impacted by, the 24-hour news cycle and the current trend to sensationalize everything. It’s on national news, a 48 Hours-like television program does a piece on the murder while its being investigated. The plot isn’t just impacted by news sources; there’s the added perspective of social media and the role it plays in hew news spreads and how stories are covered. It becomes clear, with some minor characters, that the death doesn’t matter much to them, but the attention the story gains is what they care about.

The novel unfolds through alternating point-of-view segments of the four suspects: Bronwyn (the brain), Addy (the beauty), Nate (the criminal) and Cooper (the athlete). While I’m not always a fan of narratives with alternating POVs, it works extremely well here because it gives the reader a chance to see the murder, and its aftermath, from more than one perspective. Not only does this provide possible motives for every character, but it also allows the reader to understand why a particular character wouldn’t have killed Simon. No one character is presented as being squeaky clean or obviously guilty. While the characters are all archetypes common in media aimed at teenagers, they aren’t one-dimensional, which is refreshing for the reader and adds depth to the story.

One of my favorite aspects of this book is how the characters’ lives are changed by this common event. Others become immediately suspicious of them, but that’s not the only outcome of Simon’s death. The murder, the investigation, the press coverage, the four students trying to solve what happened leads to each individual coming to some kind of realization, whether its about self-acceptance or getting a toxic person out of their life. The murder investigation is obviously a huge plotpoint, and their lives may never be the same, but smaller problems arise, less important details come to life. Despite the fact that they’re all suspects, and that each character only knows their truth about what happened, they are brought closer together by this event and try to work together to determine what exactly happened.

Now, let’s discuss the plot without spoiling the ending. I enjoyed the death itself, mostly because it posed an interesting mystery. Simon doesn’t get shot or stabbed. There isn’t a power outage and when the lights turn back on, he’s dead on the floor. He dies, everyone in the room sees it, but no one’s able to figure out what happened. How he died, and how the killer is able to kill him, is just as compelling as trying to figure out who did it. The revelation of how Simon died, and who killed him, is equally compelling, and unlike some novels, the answer doesn’t come out of nowhere, nor does there need to be an extensive amount of exposition given, for it to make sense. It also isn’t glaringly obvious up front who’s involved with what happened.

While I find McManus’s novel great overall, I do have some minor complaints. A few of the secrets the main four characters want to keep hidden are a bit cliché or overdramatized. Some of that could be chalked up to teenagers having heightened emotions, and everything feeling like a huge deal in high school. Simon, our murder victim, has plenty of enemies and people who aren’t sad to see him die which feels a little bit of a cop-out, but that could just be me. There were a few scenes in the book where a character’s actions seemed a bit over the top or their words didn’t sound like something a normal person would say. Again, this is just my opinion but those scenes kind of took me out of the story a little bit. I found the treatment of one character after her secret gets out, because of course the secrets are revealed, was a little heavy-handed but I’m also picky about the specific topic it covered. My dislikes are mostly related to small details, and not major aspects to the story.

Rating: 4 stars