The Innocent Wife

I got this book as my free gift when I joined the Golsboro book of the month scheme about a year ago. Finally got round to reading it. Its basic premise - a man has been convicted dubiously and is currently sitting in prison in the US, is an interesting enough premise. It has the workings of a solid procedural thriller in unravelling how he came to be there. I am a fan of procedural thrillers - so far so good.

Where this book falls flat for me is the second hook it tries to work - a romance from a pen pal to the convicted murderer. The fact that murderers do appear to get ‘fan' mail in real life I have always found bizarre. I can kind of get how the story tries to establish that the dynamic builds from a position of seeing a documentary about the dubious conviction, but how quickly it develops into a marriage just feels strange. Then when we come to the marriage itself, their chemistry is completely flat. I have never seen a story where a newly wed couple are that disinterested in one another. I am not a fan of romance novels, I tend to find them painful to read in a cringey and awkward kind of way. I get that people in love are cringey and awkward, I just don't want to read about it. This novel manages to take that and make it cringey, awkward and just plain boring. When the relationship between these two characters is the center point of the book to have their relationship this flat and boring makes the whole book frustrating to read.

The twist at the end is interesting enough, and this story feeds into the whole ‘Making a Murderer' craze that has happened recently. Unfortunately the book failed to engage me enough for me to provide any recommendation for it though.

Merged review:

I got this book as my free gift when I joined the Golsboro book of the month scheme about a year ago. Finally got round to reading it. Its basic premise - a man has been convicted dubiously and is currently sitting in prison in the US, is an interesting enough premise. It has the workings of a solid procedural thriller in unravelling how he came to be there. I am a fan of procedural thrillers - so far so good.

Where this book falls flat for me is the second hook it tries to work - a romance from a pen pal to the convicted murderer. The fact that murderers do appear to get ‘fan' mail in real life I have always found bizarre. I can kind of get how the story tries to establish that the dynamic builds from a position of seeing a documentary about the dubious conviction, but how quickly it develops into a marriage just feels strange. Then when we come to the marriage itself, their chemistry is completely flat. I have never seen a story where a newly wed couple are that disinterested in one another. I am not a fan of romance novels, I tend to find them painful to read in a cringey and awkward kind of way. I get that people in love are cringey and awkward, I just don't want to read about it. This novel manages to take that and make it cringey, awkward and just plain boring. When the relationship between these two characters is the center point of the book to have their relationship this flat and boring makes the whole book frustrating to read.

The twist at the end is interesting enough, and this story feeds into the whole ‘Making a Murderer' craze that has happened recently. Unfortunately the book failed to engage me enough for me to provide any recommendation for it though.