My Lovely Wife by Samantha Downing – 359 pages
ARC courtesy of Netgalley in exchange for an honest review
Book Blurb:
Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams, and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored.
We look like a normal couple. We’re your neighbors, the parents of your kid’s friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with.
We all have secrets to keeping a marriage alive.
Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.
My Review: 4 stars
My Lovely Wife was an amazing thriller, especially for debut fiction. As a reminder, this genre isn’t my favorite, as I really don’t like the anxiety and worry that suspenseful, psychological mysteries bring on. This one had me glued to the pages, even when I was ready to scream and toss the book across the room.
The husband, who is married to his seemingly ‘lovely wife’, tells the story in the first-person point of view. The same man often takes on the persona of a deaf bachelor in order to get to know women, after all, the world will remember the deaf man’s name, not his own. Um, what the heck? At this point I knew the characters were whacko.
This story had a lot of layers to it, especially where the kids were concerned. The twists that related to both children really took me for a loop and added depth to the story. I mean, how can you have normal kids when your parents are part time serial killers? Just like Dexter (the Netflix show), the story makes you root for the bad guys and be disgusted at the same time. What amazed me were the amount of lies that floated around this rule driven family. There were lies to neighbors, to teachers, to their kids and by their kids, and most of all between the husband and wife themselves. I can totally see this as a mini-series.
I did guess some of the outcomes which was no surprise, but I wasn’t prepared for the last line of the epilogue. Could a possible sequel ensue? I’m not sure, but that ending left it open. I found many descriptive words that were used over and over again, first that pops to mind is: hair the color of “roasted chestnut”. I hope those were rectified as ARCs will often have changes made before official release date. Fans of this genre, go buy this now!
Quotes I liked:
What I found sexy in my wife, I found horrifying in my daughter.”
“There is no real news. No updates. Just new ways of repeating the old.”
“Dad failure number 79,402, and she’s only thirteen.”
“Even a big house can feel suffocating.”
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