Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen’s THE WIFE BETWEEN US

Title: The Wife Between Us
Author: Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
Format: eBook, courtesy of NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press
Start Date: December 16, 2017
End Date: December 23, 2017
Rating: 4 stars

I was happy, I think, but I wonder now if my memory is playing tricks on me. If it is giving me the gift of an illusion. We all layer them over our remembrances; the filters through which we want to see our lives.

Thrillers are an interesting breed of novel. They can either be done poorly – with obvious red herrings, predictable story lines, and overdone tropes – or they can be done well – with subtle clues and subplots that keep you guessing until the very last page. The Wife Between Us, I am happy to report, neatly falls into the latter category.

I don’t usually read too many thrillers (maybe one a year) but I read three in 2017, which is admittedly a lot for me as I tend to inadvertently focus on general fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction. Out of those that I read – Since We Fell (review), Lies She Told, and The Wife Between Us – this was by far my favorite.

The Wife Between Us is the debut novel of Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. The synopsis from Goodreads:

When you read this book, you will make many assumptions.
You will assume you are reading about a jealous wife and her obsession with her replacement.
You will assume you are reading about a woman about to enter a new marriage with the man she loves.
You will assume the first wife was a disaster and that the husband was well rid of her.
You will assume you know the motives, the history, the anatomy of the relationships.
Assume nothing.

The first half of this book was brilliant. I had a nagging suspicion of what the first “Big Reveal” was going to be, though I was still blindsided. The second half was more subtle yet more fast-paced: the plot was working toward another reveal, but it wasn’t as obvious (at least to me). These are my favorite kinds of books – the ones where I have absolutely no idea where the story is heading. They’re fun because every page is a surprise, every twist and reveal is a shock.

I also enjoy books where the narrator is notoriously unreliable – Vanessa was still in emotional turmoil after her divorce from Richard and reeling from the revelation that he was now engaged to the “other woman.” Her revelations about the past read like a pile of jumbled-up snapshots that were scattered and never returned to chronological order. Even when she relays something about her and Richard’s past, you can’t fully trust her version of the truth.

In my marriage, there were three truths, three alternate and sometimes competing realities. There was Richard’s truth. There was my truth. And there was the actual truth, which is always the most elusive to recognize. This could be the case in every relationship, that we think we’ve entered into a union with another person when, in fact, we’ve formed a triangle with one point anchored by a silent but all-seeing judge, the arbiter of reality.

Overall, this was a fantastic female-centered story. It was an important story about female relationships: how marriage can change them, how jealousy can fuel them, and how women can either be each other’s best friends or worst enemies. It was also an important story about how love can change a person, for better or for worse.

The writing was phenomenal and kept me guessing up until the last page. Even though there are tropes that feel familiar – the unreliable and jealous ex-wife narrator, the possibly-lying and possibly-manipulative husband, the “other woman” who destroys their seemingly-happy marriage – they feel fresh and new in the hands of co-authors Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. If you haven’t read this yet, read it. This book isn’t what it seems on the surface. Instead, it’s so much more.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an advanced copy of this eBook in exchange for an honest review.

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