The Younger Wife

I just reviewed The Younger Wife By Sally Hepworth

Father and heart surgeon Stephen is excited for his two daughters to meet the woman he is going to marry. Interior designer Heather who came to help remodel his home... for his wife.
Pam, who has advanced dementia, ends up moving into an assisted living home as Heather moves into their marital home.
Tully and Rachel are blind sided at the “meet the girlfriend lunch” and do not take kindly to this woman, who is younger than the pair, coming and taking their rich father away from their sick mother but Tully and Rachel both have their own problems and their mother.... During her states of lucidity has sinister things to say about the girl's father which only intensifies when Rachel finds a large amount of money hidden in a hot water bottle belonging to their mother.
Is what their mother says about their father true or just the ravings of a lady who doesn't remember fact from fiction? Or is Heather a gold digger who moved in on a happily married man? Can they find out before it is too late to stop the wedding?

I have been so spoiled lately with how good the books I've been reading have been and this one definitely had me hooked from the beginning.
Every single character has a problem or 2 in their own lives and it was thrilling to watch them grapple with their own demons while they try to separate fact from fiction when it comes to their parents.

I didn't much care for Tully at first but the more I learned about her the more I found myself softening to her. The role of being a mother with her severe anxiety must be a challenge that leads her to getting up to things she shouldn't. I totally get it.
Rachel I found quite lovely and I knew right from the get go why she was the way she was, the author doesn't reveal the secret about her until over half way and you get a real understanding of her by then. The sister dynamic flexes and adapts as the book progresses and I really enjoyed seeing the women mend that fence.

You don't learn what is really going on with Stephen and Heather until the very end of the book and I was shocked I didn't guess it. It was a pleasant twist. While this book doesn't have intense twists, the twists it does have are subtle but intriguing. It made for a well paced but with a slow burn thriller that I found riveting and crushed in 4 hours.

If you enjoy a well written and fantastically well thought out book then this beauty is the book for you. 4.5 stars

Available to buy now! Thank you Netgalley and St martin's press for my free ARC copy in exchange for my honest review.