WHOA! That was completely INSANE! In a good way mind you...

I have seen all the hype about this book so of course I had to have it. I am attempting to read more psychological thrillers next year in an effort to try something new and different and out of the norm...

And The Wife Between Us was just WOW!

I will admit that the first half was a bit slow moving for me and I wasn't sure how I was feeling but when the big secret was revealed... Just WOW! I know I am saying that a lot, but I don't want to give anything away and I just want to tell you how this book blew my mind!

Don't go in with any expectations... don't start reading and thinking that you have this all figured out because you don't I can promise you that.

Nothing is at it seems... nothing is completely perfect... no one is being completely honest... simply put—the way that these authors executed this book was seamless and pretty darn brilliant.

I know I am not saying much and for that I apologize. But if you are looking for a masterfully told story with twists and turns and a clever storyline that is different and exciting then look no further than this book!

Thanks to St. Martin’s Press and Netgalley for the chance to read and review this novel!

Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen are about to be household names in the realm of powerhouse women authors. I’ve seen this book everywhere and it hasn’t even been published yet! Readers everywhere are hyped up and salivating for a taste. The blurb tells us very little (thank you for that!), except to “assume nothing” and it could not be more accurate. To avoid spoiling anything for potential readers, I’ll keep my review short and sweet as well.

I’ll admit, when I started reading, it took me a little while to get into The Wife Between Us. The plot was a slow roller, descriptive in mundane tasks, and then BAM! Plot twist. I was knocked off my rocker. Completely shocked and confused, I had to go back and re-read about five times to make sure I was truly getting what was happening. Needless to say, I did not see that one coming, which is rare for me these days. Sometimes I feel like I’ve seen every twist an author can throw at me. Happily, I can say this duo proved me wrong.

When Part II starts, readers will not be able to put this book down. You might as well super glue it to your hands, because it’s not going anywhere. If you think you have an idea what will happen, guess again, because you’ll be proved wrong time and time again.

I’ve seen this novel compared to Gone Girl and The Girl on the Train. Oftentimes I hate these comparisons used to sell books, but I feel like they are actually warranted for this title. I clearly see the similarities and daresay The Wife Between Us feels like a perfect mash-up of the two. Start the year with this cleverly written novel, folks! It’s new, different, and heartwarming in the most unexpected of ways. As the story has sunk in for the past couple of days, I feel even more connected and in awe of the twists and turns within the pages. I decided to bump up my rating from three stars to four because I’m still thinking about this book days later. I’m slightly stingy with my stars and ended feeling like I needed more knowledge about the secondary character, Maureen, than I received (just read it), hence the lower rating. Above all, this book will be a solid read for 2018 reading lists. Find the links to pre-order below and start your new year off with a page-turner.

This is a first from this duo of writers. I loved this book. It was thrilling up to the very end. I thought I had it figured out but it kept changing. What begins to be a scorned wife turns into a woman helping another not experience what she has gone through. Crazy, I'll show you crazy. LOL!!!!

In terms of being engrossed and wanting to know what would happen next, The Wife Between Us is a big success. I read this in only a few sittings, unwilling to put it down until I knew how things ended.

In terms of being a twisty thriller, The Wife Between Us didn't quite hit the mark for me. The twist at the end of part one felt obvious to me, and the final one in the epilogue felt forced. I wonder if this is a direct result of the marketing and jacket description overselling the twistiness. They basically tell the reader to expect to have their minds blown, but that wasn't my reading experience at all. Part One is sluggish, setting up all the background and characters, and Parts Two and Three feel like an entirely different book altogether, kind of like Gone Girl but without as much of a shock. The second parts actually just feel like one of the better-made Lifetime movies you can watch any Saturday afternoon.

But having said all that, I can see why certain readers will enjoy this more than I did. I think the glut of this type of "unreliable female narrator with a dark secret" novels has numbed me to their impact (Gone Girl, Girl on the Train, The Woman in Cabin 10, Where They Found Her, etc etc etc), which isn't the fault of the book or the authors but of the marketplace.

Psychological thrillers always lure me in... I enjoy the suspense, the thought I have figured out the ending, and this book had me convinced I knew, boy was I wrong. There are so many twists and turns that are mind bending, compelling and downright brilliant it left me breathless. Assume nothing is correct, my thoughts kept changing, back and forth and there is still one thought that has me puzzled although my imagination can run wild. The stories of Nellie, Richard, Vanessa, and Emma intertwine and you think you know their history however you will have doubt many times. The manipulations and secrets of past events and current are cleverly written to leave the reader confused in the beginning and even later on. The authors have outdone themselves, I can't believe this book was co-authored, it was seamless. I definitely want to read more from these authors! Thanks to Net Galley for sending me this e-book ARC.

When you read a very hyped up thriller and just end up disappointed.


I'm not going to give away any of the storyline because it is one that you just have to read. When I started this book I was over the top excited...because it does start off so very good.

Then for some stupid reason the book gods that hate me stepped in and decided to make this a total story twist overload.


Every frigging wife book doesn't have to be stupid Gone Girl. (I hated that shit too.)
Just make some crazy married peoples and I will eat it up.


But what do I know? Everyone else is loving the heck out of this book. I'm giving it a three star not because it deserved it. BECAUSE IT DOES NOT...but I couldn't stop reading the thing.

Now for the trolls that for some unholy reason will feel the need to troll this vague ass review.


*You really don't...because I'll just block you and then talk about you when you can't post on it anymore

It isn’t often that a book has the power to leave me speechless, or better yet, in awe of the complexity and the brilliant delivery that appears to be the unraveling of a woman scorned but turns out to be that woman’s quest or mission as she unravels the truths behind the calculated lies that shattered the woman she once was and created a Picasso-like rendering of who she has become.

He swept her off her feet, gave her the world, and treated her like a prized possession and that began her fall from marital grace. That is when the “other woman” came in and that is when Vanessa knew she had one mission in life and it became her obsession, even as the rest of the world moved on, even as her world was imploding around her. And. Nothing. Would. Stop. Her.

THE WIFE BETWEEN US by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen is dark, mysterious and heavy with atmosphere. It is riveting, it is gut-wrenching and it will show both the worst of mankind and the best. It will leave you speechless. It will leave you in awe of the complexity of this tale, the complexity of relationships and power and control. It will leave you raw, witnessing human frailties, human cruelties and manipulations. It will leave you in awe of the sheer power of human determination and the will to survive, damaged, flawed and a little broken.

Each page will hold another revelation, another piece to the puzzle and yet, until you have that last piece, nothing will fit. But after that final page, after that final piece is in place, you will have the truth, warts and all.

Powerful, powerful reading, worth re-visiting again and again, because there will be something you missed the last time around, because no one is as they seem.

I received an ARC edition from St. Martin's Press!

Publisher: St. Martin's Press (January 9, 2018)
Publication Date: January 9, 2018
Genre: Mystery | Psychological Thriller
Print Length: 352 pages
Available from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
For Reviews & More: http://tometender.blogspot.com

A powerful, richly crafted, brilliantly devious suspense read. One of the best of the year.

The Wife Between us a story of women and the man they’ve all been married to- and manipulated, coddled, stalked?, loved, hated. Nellie is riding high on her impending marriage to the perfect Richard, while Vanessa, his ex, tries to piece together a life for herself again. Perfect is rarely, truly perfect, and as the reader witnesses both Nellie and Vanessa’s lives, and their relationships with Richard, they are left wondering...who is really the victim, or are they all?

Suspenseful but slow for a thriller, the pace is off, and the ending is mostly predictable.

This book gives very little away in the summary, and I will follow its lead. The Wife Between Us is billed in its description as a story that appears to be about a classic love triangle (ex-wife, her former husband, his current fiance), but may not be all it appears.

I liked everything about this book!

It's rare every part of a book can completely surprise me, but this story absolutely did. I never knew what was coming next. This was one of those books that had me literally gasping out loud in total shock at numerous parts of the story. I immediately started looking back at previous pages, and the story completely held up when viewed through the numerous new lenses Hendricks and Pekkanen created.

For me, there honestly wasn't anything not to like about this book. It's so clever, and so well-orchestrated.

Read this book! You will not be able to put it down, and, like me, I suspect you will love every minute of being fooled by the authors' fantastically twisted tale.

If there’s one thing that nearly every person who bravely enters the romantic-relationship fray can bet on experiencing at some point, it’s the feeling of having their hearts broken… of being cast aside (for someone else? after the “new” wore off? because they drifted apart?), and losing whatever special bond they had (or thought they had) with another. (And sure, we’ve all heard the stories about those too-cute-for-words couples who met at pre-school, never dated anyone else, and lived happily-ever-after, but me, I view such tales as either urban legends or empirical evidence of magical unicorns.) Anyway, back to the rest of us… no matter whether straight, gay, young, old, experienced, or novice, the bottom line is always pretty much the same: being rejected hurts like hell.

How we handle it, though—what we do, how we cope—that’s where things really get interesting. And, in The Wife Between Us (by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen), we get a look at just how far some people might push the “coping” envelope.

_______________

Vanessa used to “have it all”—certainly in the eyes of most people who knew her. A handsome, wealthy, and doting husband—Richard, her prince in a bespoke suit—who’d whisked her away from her former life, requesting that she quit her low-paying jobs (as a preschool teacher and a waitress) in New York City to move out to the beautiful house in the suburbs he surprised her with as a wedding present. Fancy dinners and soirees to attend, adorned with fabulous clothes, shoes, and jewelry. Plenty of free time to pursue her own interests. The possibility of starting a family. On the surface, it seemed like a fairy tale come to life.

Until several years later, when Richard’s eye wandered, that is… to his secretary Emma, herself a younger-by-a-decade carbon copy of Vanessa. And just like that, the dream was over.

When we first actually see Vanessa, it’s clear she’s still struggling; she is working as a style consultant at a high-end department store (waiting on the very women she used to rub elbows with). She drinks too much (and tries desperately to hide it from the aunt who took her in). She’s depressed. She can think of little but the man of her dreams—her man—in the arms of the nubile replacement he’s now dating.

Things don’t come to a head, though, until one day a customer—one of the women with whom she’d attended many of the same events—innocently (or not so innocently, perhaps) lets it slip, while trying on a designer dress, that Richard and Emma are getting married. Like a candle being snuffed, the tiny bit of normalcy Vanessa had been working so hard to achieve, dies.

Suddenly, her whole world becomes about making sure the wedding doesn’t take place, and she’ll do whatever it takes to prevent it.

But, here’s the thing: no one—not the cast-aside Vanessa, not the husband-who-decided-he-wanted-a-younger-model Richard, and not the fish-about-to-be-out-of-water Emma—is quite what she or he seems… nor do any of them behave as one might assume.

_______________________

Much like Gone Girl or The Girl on the Train (both of which The Wife Between Us will inevitably be compared to), this story has as many layers as an onion… and I read it with equal measures of apprehension, suspense, and a sort of giddy delight as each layer was peeled—or ripped, at times—away to reveal what else lay just beneath. (I didn’t see much of it coming.)

Wonder of wonders, Hendricks and Pekkanen managed to come full circle by the last page, tying up all the loose ends in ways that actually made sense—quite a feat in something so elegantly complex.

Psychological suspense, fear, relatable emotions (and not of the pretty variety, but the raw and real), and understandable actions (and reactions)… The Wife Between Us has it all. This is one hugely-satisfying read. :)


~GlamKitty

Note: At the time of this review, The Wife Between Us is slated to come out early January, 2018.

This book was so good!! It took some unexpected turns that I enjoyed. I hate when a book has an ending that the reader can see coming after the first few chapters. For me this book was not predictable. I got a little unexpected turn about halfway through the book and I was a little shocked. Then I thought that there is still half the book left; what else is going to happen in the rest of the book? I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone wanting to read a thriller that is unpredictable. I can't wait to read more from these authors.

Gripping writing! As one expects from a thriller, this has a major twist about halfway through. I partially saw it coming—but the execution was top-notch, so I didn't mind. The quick chapters, which switch between Vanessa (a recent divorcee) and Nellie (a bride-to-be), make it nearly impossible to put this book down. This is far better than most of the domestic thrillers I've read in recent years (yes, including the ones that are often the hot points of comparison)—the complexity of these characters and the clever execution of the narrative structure sets this apart. It's hard to say much more without spoiling some of the twists, and this is definitely the sort of book it's best to read without knowing too much in advance, so I'll stop here.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for allowing me to read this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Everything Dark Moves into the Light…Eventually

Mark 4:22
"For nothing is hidden, except to be revealed; nor has anything been secret, but that it would come to light.”

The above scripture perfectly sums up this wild tale of a woman seemingly scorned and her perceived revenge upon her replacement.

Except that nothing is as it seems.

We meet Vanessa at a low point. In her mid-thirties, she’s a heavy drinking, insecure and troubled woman. She cannot seem to hold onto a simple sales job. All consumed with her ex-husband’s abandonment for a younger, far more vibrant woman, Vanessa stalks her successor with a reckless demeanor just before her wedding to Richard, alluding all the while of something sinister to come.

Upbeat and beautiful, twenty-something Nellie is everything Vanessa is not. Upon closer examination perhaps there are key parallels in their personalities. Their worlds are about to collide in the most shocking of ways.

Richard is the man both women pine for. Wealthy, handsome, and successful he is the man of every woman’s dreams. Or is he?

The past is a key character in this taut psychological thriller about the inability to face our truest demons head on and the resulting consequences on our life and the lives of others.

Nothing stays secret forever.

BRB Rating: Read It.

I came across a preview of The Wife Between Us and was immediately sucked into this story by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen. If you like a story with unexpected twists and turns, consider checking this out.

There isn’t much about the story that I can reveal as I don’t want to give anything away. What I will say is that these authors have created some very unreliable characters and built them around this story that will have you guessing about what is really going on the entire time. I really had no clue what was going to happen from one chapter to the next and I liked it.

Consider checking this one out and I will be looking forward to more from these authors in the future.

A great voice in suspense. The twists will definitely keep you guessing, just when you think you have the complexities all figured out.

For starters go into this book blind! Try not to read to far into it and definitely don’t read a bunch of reviews because the fun of a thriller is getting that solid thrill all on your own. And boyyyyy do you get it with this one! Have fun because it’s one hell of a ride! Big thanks to Netgalley and St. Martins Press for the ARC!

amazing! I was on a roller coaster the entire time....not sure what was going to happen next! At times I thought I knew what was going to happen but was wrong. I loved the twists that happened throughout the story. Looking forward to reading more by this author!

At first, I thought this was going to be about a wife that got left for a younger woman, but it turned out to be a little different and by different, I mean head spinning twists and psychological thrilling suspense. And, I will do my best not to give too much away, because I do not want to ruin anything at all.

Vanessa is trying to pick up the pieces of her life and put them back together, her divorce was messy, and all of her drinking doesn’t help matters either. She has so many questions running through her head about how did everything go so very wrong with her marriage. Why did her husband leave her, and for another woman? But, as the the pieces start to fall together, Vanessa comes to a truth that she just can’t believe.

The story given in alternating point of views from Vanessa and Nellie. So, with two POV’s, we have the ex-wife and the wife to be. The way this was written gave a little bit of past and information in each chapter before going back to the other person, so I couldn’t make up my mind who I was suppose to be trusting or even rooting for. Was Vanessa just obsessed with her ex husbands soon to be new wife, or was she just crazy? Was Nellie blind to what was right in front of her. Just when I thought I thought I had one part figured out, well, insert twist here… It wasn’t until the end when I figured out what exactly was going on. And that I loved! I think having both unreliable characters was a fascinating twist all in itself.

The story that unfolds is a fast paced, dark and spine tingling one, but even with the fast pace allowing each piece of the puzzle to fall into place. There are so many twists and turns, nad one the I absolutely did not see coming. What an addictive read! I am always on the lookout for a fantastic psychological thriller, and I that is just what I got with The Wife Between Us!