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"The Wife Between Us" Book Review


I have been on a serious suspense/thriller kick and The Wife Between Us didn't disappoint! Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen seemed to combine the psychological turmoil introduced in Gone Girl and transformed it into a new story line all their own. Despite having just referenced another book in order to compare the genre of this novel, I don't intend to dispute the original concept these women have created. 

 The novel is broken up into three different sections that all follow the enticing love story between an ex-wife, Vanessa, a young fiancee, Nellie, and their ex-husband/fiancee, Richard. Introduced firstly as a bitter, forgotten ex-wife, Vanessa's story sends the reader into a swirling rabbit hole between all three characters, and by the time Part I finishes, the reader is consumed with an enormous amount of questions, pushing them to turn the page for more answers. I was impressed by Hendricks' and Pakkanen's capability to keep the pace of the story at an even level, never revealing too much until the precise moment it was needed. I enjoyed their attention to detail, describing not only the physical attributes of the characters' but their psychological well-beings as well (this matters, considering the genre of suspense/thriller is mostly about mind-warping scenarios). I found myself ending the book on the same note as Gone Girl, hence my reference to that novel in particular. When I finished that novel, I closed the book and contemplated why I enjoyed that particular novel so much and that's because the ending wasn't a full-blown, full-circle ending where everything sort of fell into place. Things were just going to get worse. I connected this to The Wife Between Us in a sense that, despite things falling into place, there was another twist on the very end of the page. I believe that twist could have been drawn out into something so much more, but I understand why Hendricks and Pekkanen would have wanted to end the novel where things were.


 I'd recommend this novel to anyone interested in the suspense/thriller genre. Regardless of this genre's hype in today's reading world and those reader's who may be skeptical about figuring out which novels to read, the layout of this novel was enticing and I'd highly incline those interested to give it a read and share what you think!

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