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Average rating2
"As a child, Bailey Browne dreamed of a knight in shining armor swooping in to rescue her and her mother. As she grows older, those dreams transform, becoming ones of a mysterious stranger who will sweep her off her feet and whisk her away from her ordinary existence. Then, suddenly, there he is. Despite the ten year difference in their ages, her working class upbringing and his of privilege, Logan Abbott and Bailey fall deeply in love. Marriage quickly follows. But when Logan brings her home to his horse farm in Louisiana, a magnificent estate on ninety wooded acres, her dreams of happily-ever-after begin to unravel. A tragic family history she knew nothing about surfaces, plus whisperings about the disappearance of his first wife, True, and rumors about the women from the area who have gone missing--and when another woman disappears, all signs point to her husband's involvement. At first Bailey ignores the whispers, even circumstantial evidence against Logan mounts. But finally, Bailey must make a choice: believe what everyone says--or bet her life on the man she loves, but is realizing she hardly knows. From the author of Justice for Sara, Erica Spindler's The First Wife is a thrilling new novel that will have you gasping on every page"--
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I'm still unsure how to rate this. Every single character is SO dysfunctional, and all of their behavior is derived from childhood issues (mostly mommy issues) and this book serves as a good warning against leaving issues like that unresolved. Or, letting the past and your feelings control your present.
-We had a character who refused to see reality for what it was, and instead, let his reality be completely tainted by his past experience. Even when the truth was staring him in the face, he refused to see the truth because he couldn't get out of his own past.
-We had a character who was so desperate to be taken care of, again because of her past, that she was mostly a weak character who had nothing to stand on but her reliance on her “knight in shining armor.”
-We had a character who had a weird dependency and jealousy for her brother caused by past childhood issues as well (her brother took over a lot of the parenting and caretaking roles) and let it extend so far that as a grown ass adult she inserts herself into her brother's romances.
- And finally, we had the character who let mommy issues completely taint the way he views women and the entire sex for the rest of his life.
The mystery was okay, but overall it got too mixed up in all the characters and all this history being drudged up for me to read. It felt discombobulated and took away from my enjoyment and overall connection to the characters and desire to see the mystery resolved.