Skip to main content

"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!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An All Too Familiar House

          Not the usual suspense-thriller synopsis I've become accustomed to when reading Lisa Jewell's novels, however, I was entranced by this novel from the get-co. The House We Grew Up In centers around a mother and her four children over the span of a decade. The mother, Lorelei, has an extensive hobby of collecting items that harbor a memory of time spent with her loved ones. Each and every memory-- meaning each and every item she just happens to come across. Lorelei is in fact a hoarder and it does not get better with time. It gets worse. In addition to Lorelei's intense and overbearing lifestyle, her children forego their relationship with their mother and each other in order to gain a sense of normalcy within their individual lives. One of Lorelei's children committed suicide at a ripe age of sixteen and her other three were simultaneously impacted by the act tremendously. Her other son took to finding a thrilling lifestyle in all the wrong places...
Post a Comment
Read more

Four-Walled Nightmare

I will always and forever say this - Lisa Jewell is the QUEEN of the suspense/thriller genre. I'm sure most who read her would agree with me in comparing her and/or referencing her written ability in crafting a phenomenal read to that of the infamous Agatha Christie in her time. Jewell's 2019 debut novel centers around a young woman by the name of Libby Jones, a competent individual with a safe, bright future ahead. Until, she receives a letter shortly after her 25th birthday informing her of a family inheritance worth a fairly decent price and then some . Jones is introduced to readers as the main character to follow, but other characters soon take stage in a plot-twisting novel where family ties don't always hold true with faith, love, and blood. Jewell has this astonishing ability to craft the perfect chapter, whether it be mere attention to detail, length of pages or strategic craftsmanship of paragraph and dialogue portions leaving the reader wanting more - causing th...
Post a Comment
Read more

All Around the Ferris Wheel

  Megan Miranda's novel, "All The Missing Girls", was a thriller/suspense novel I was happy to inhale from my TBR pile - literally (two days of reading straight through). The storyline follows Nicolette Farrell's life, from ten years prior to drastically moving out of her hometown and present day. I believe anyone can relate when Nic's character spends time reminiscing about how things were during high school vs how much things can change when becoming adults. But, what happens when something you did ten years ago starts to repeat itself - almost too much? It makes you wonder, are we really any different than how we used to be? Or have we just gotten better at masking it? Miranda does an awesome job, in my opinion, by introducing this story in backwards timeline sectioning. Nic's return is broken up into two/three weeks worth of a story (with longer portions towards the end of the novel) but Miranda works backwards in showing the jump between past and present...
Post a Comment
Read more