The Wife Between Us: 4 Stars

Author: Greer Hendricks/Sarah Pekkanen
Length: 346 pgs.

OMG That ending! So many twists and turns that I honestly did not see coming! This book totally messes with your head and I loved every minute of it.

It starts off uneventful enough, taking us through the daily routine of both an ex-wife and a newly engaged young woman. There's only small indications that trouble might be brewing, but nothing to really set off any alarm bells. However, this book is like an onion, slowly peeling back layer by layer to reveal the truth at its center. There is a giant twist 2/3 of the way through the book, which concludes Part 1. Another twist concludes part 2. And at the end, there is yet another little nugget of a shocker thrown at us to wrap it all up.

The synopsis itself promises that we will be surprised:

"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.

And though I tried to keep an open mind and figure out what exactly I was assuming that might be incorrect, the first twist still caught me completely off-guard. And when I went back and checked certain parts after I had this new information, it all added up to the picture that was slowly being shown to me.

It's hard to really review this book without spoiling anything, so if you're interested in reading it stop here.

I loved that the authors fucked with my head; not once, not twice, but 3 or 4 BIG times-and also sprinkled a handful of small occurrences throughout the book that we view in a new light once we learn the truth.

They created a truly frightening, scheming, twisted, manipulative individual in Richard (not to mention his sister Maureen) and perfectly painted him as a somewhat controlling but non-threatening trophy husband, whose insane true self is only shown to us at first in bits and pieces.

It's no small feat to trick an audience, especially in written form when we can re-read passages and re-check things at our leisure. But The Wife Between Us really threw me for a loop. Even as I tried to stay ahead of the curve, I never really knew what I was in for.