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.