The Wives

Yikes. Yikes. I had such high hopes that I would enjoy this more than, um, almost everyone I know who has reviewed this, but sadly, those hopes were unfounded.

I won't name any characters, but I am going to talk about the plot a bit here, so if you do not want to risk feeling spoiled in any way at all, let me just say one quick non-spoiler-y thing: the plot arc of this book did not know what it wanted to do with itself and the writing struggled. And now, you should probably stop reading if you really don't want to risk any vague spoilers.

The book started strong and was fairly captivating for the first half, but around the midway point, everything hit the fan — and by “everything”, I mainly just mean some of the worst mental illness rep I've ever seen in my life. I know mental illness is a common enough theme in thrillers and it's not like that's a surprising fact or a rarity by any means, but I'm not sure I've ever felt this uncomfortable with the way it's written!

Not only did it make me cringe a lot, but the representation is also incredibly self-contradicting. The character in question constantly alternates between having hallucinations and delusions, to recognizing the truth of what actually happened after only a literal moment's thought. Even if I weren't looking at this from my viewpoint (which is that of someone who has watched multiple loved ones experience delusions and hallucinations for years on end), even from a writing standpoint, it makes no sense. Every time a plot point is built up in this story, it's immediately torn back down.

Finally, I understand that many reviewers probably didn't feel comfortable mentioning this because I could see some readers seeing this as a spoiler, but as someone who genuinely wishes I had known beforehand, I'm saying it anyways: this book focuses very heavily on miscarriages and infertility as both plot points and singular defining traits of characters. There are characters in this book who I felt like I hardly even knew outside of their infertility, and some of the commentary and the ways in which the entire discussion was handled felt so callous and uncaring to me. As someone who has lived through a lot of heartache RE: miscarriages and infertility, maybe I'm just exceptionally picky about the way I see it discussed in stories, but this was not it.

On top of everything else... I hated this main character. She is horribly cruel to every single other woman in this book (except one, I guess, who she's nice to outwardly but thinking horrible things about constantly). She has no personality whatsoever outside of wanting to be her husband's favorite sex partner. She spends unnecessary amounts of time bragging about how she wants to sexually please her husband better than anyone else because she doesn't necessarily mind him loving other women, as long as he only thinks of her when he's having sex with them. The entire experience of being inside her brain was disgusting and wholly un-enjoyable.

I intended to write a one- or two-paragraph mini review discussing the major issues I saw in this story and instead it's turned into a full page of ranting, and I haven't even touched on all of the problems (like the way mental health hospitals and doctors are depicted — don't get me started, but my friend and buddy read partner Malliumpkin wrote an INCREDIBLE review here that you should check out). And finally — I swear I'll shut up after this — there are HUGE plot points that get brought up and NEVER explained or tidied up. We're left with such a massive amount of loose ends at the end of the book, and it's all just swept under the all-encompassing rug of “but, mental illness!”

In case you couldn't tell, I hated this book. I actually started this review at 2 stars and the more I think on it, it feels generous to even give it 1. I regret spending my time on this, and despite having loved the first book of Tarryn's I read, I loathed so much about this story that I'm hesitant to ever pick up another of her works at all.

✨ Content warnings for: miscarriages (described in graphic detail and discussed many times), domestic violence, ableism, slut-shaming, internalized misogyny, mental health hospitalization, alcoholism, mentions of child abuse, mentions of murder/suicide, infidelity

Thank you to the publisher for providing me with this review copy in exchange for an honest review.