This is the first book that I have read by Leigh Russell and it is one that I fully enjoyed.

The story centres around a wife finding out that her husband has been having an affair. Then before she can confront him he dies & she is the number one suspect.

The story then twists and turns as the truth eventually surfaces with a final twist at the very end although the story was just a little bit too unbelievable for me in parts

Overall I enjoyed the book and will look to read some of the author's other books

The writer of the superb Geraldine Steel series has written a fine standalone psychological thriller. It is fast-paced, exciting and unpredictable. Only a few questionable decisions made by the titular character prevent it from five star status.

This book took a lot of turns, some I was looking for, some I wasn't. It was a good story, I liked the plot and mystery around Paul's murder. The only thing I had a minor issue with was Dan supposedly having CP. As someone who works with clients with CP, it just didn't come across to me as believable, he seemed too normal if a little high strung about taking his exams.

I have read and enjoyed all the books in the DI Geraldine Steel series, but was very disappointed with this book. I thought the storyline was very weak and far fetched and found Julie, the main character, very silly and irritating. Sorry this book was not for me.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

This was new ground for Leigh Russell as she moves from her police procedural stories to a psychological thriller. Julie is devastated when she discovers that her husband of 19 years has been cheating on her. Ok she knew that things had cooled off a little between them but she thought that they were alright. Julie is faced with a decision, carry on and hope the affair fizzles out or confront him. After going out of her mind for a week she finally confides in her two closest friends but before she can take any action she finds him dead in their bed. And what’s more is that the police think that she killed him!
Sometimes you need to experience a situation before you understand all the emotions that you go though when you find that your husband has been cheating. It is no good-looking in and thinking I wouldn’t do that because believe me going through it is totally different. Julie’s emotions run really high, especially after he died, to the point of you can feel the hate coming from the pages the more her life falls apart. After all she has even been cheated out of throwing him out! and now she is loosing everything, including her son. When the police become one tracked minded that Julie is the murderer she has to take radical actions to prove her innocence.
Just when you think things can’t get any worse they always do with poor Julie always seeming to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Leigh Russell keeps the tension tight with character that all seem like they have something to hide. I wouldn’t trust any of them but when you have no-one then beggars can’t be choosers. It is one of those stories that I didn’t know if Julie was being stitched up or if she was just caught up in the whole thing.
This was a story that just kept giving as I kept thinking super end then it continued, loved it. Julie was certainly a new woman when it was all over. I really enjoyed this thriller that I easily read in an afternoon sitting.

The adulterer's wife had a suspenseful family drama with murder theme going as the base of the plot.
Husband Paul having affair and wife Julie finding out is the family drama part, the twist comes when the husband is murdered and the clues point to the wife.
Then it is a quick easy breezy read, with lies and secrets with the Julie investigating to get to the truth. My first book by the author, other than the slow pace, I enjoyed the story. The parts where Julie shows her determination and her fearless side while being alone and framed made me cheer for her and made me like her.
On the whole, adulterer's wife proved her innocence with an enjoyable read.

The Adulterer's Wife by Leigh Russell is my first read by this author and I loved it and it will definitely not be the last! I found this book easy to read a great holiday book whilst on the beach etc. It had lots of twist and turns that keeps you guessing right up until.the end. Before I knew it I had finished the book.

Big thank you Ito Netgalley I received a copy of this book to read and review.

A slow start to this book but building up with lots of twists to become a tense thriller. Well worth a read

I was looking forward to reading this book after so many positive reviews but to be honest I found several holes in the unrealistic plot which made no sense. A decent read but not a masterpiece.

I really wanted to like this but I just couldn’t! The plot was flimsy, the prose was clunky and the storyline was not only far fetched but actually a bit boring. It felt like it was dragging on and I felt no empathy for any of the characters - Julie was deeply unlikeable in my opinion. Also it irritated me how frequently she referred to the money and her cash flow problems. **Thanks to Bloodhound Books, Netgalley and the author for an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review**

I enjoyed the book. It was well written and kept me enthralled from start to finish. Leigh Russell is one of my favourite authors but didn’t know what to expect from her first stand alone book but I was pleasantly surprised.

The Adulterer’s Wife is my first read by Leigh Russell. The main character Julie finds out her husband Paul is having an affair. She is understandably upset and is wondering what to do when she finds him dead in their bed. Because the police find out Paul was a cheater they assume Julie is the murderer. Since the police suspect her, Julie feels her only chance is to find out who the real killer is.

I had mixed feelings about Julie’s character. At times she aggravated me when she was doing things that seemed to make her situation worse. At other times I felt bad for her and her situation. None of the other characters were really that remarkable or likable. This was a quick read for me since I was unable to put it down. I would recommend this to others who enjoy this genre. I can’t wait to read more from this author. Thank you Leigh Russell, NetGalley and Bloodhound Books for providing me with a copy of this book to read.

I haven't read any of Leigh Russell's acclaimed crime novels but I'll definitely be adding them to my wishlist after reading The Adulterer's Wife. Although I had my suspicions early on about what had happened, and I'll not say if I was right or not, I still really enjoyed the book and found myself being thrown off the scent a little bit by the clever way that Leigh Russell had drawn her characters.

Paul makes the fatal mistake of leaving his mobile at home one day when it pings with a message and his wife, Julie, feels the bottom of her world fall out. As Julie scrolls through the other messages, the evidence is overwhelming: Paul is having an affair. Julie thought he was playing squash on a Tuesday when he was actually playing away with a woman named Bella. When Paul rushes back home to retrieve his phone, Julie hides it and says she hasn't seen it. Rather therapeutically I have to say, Julie takes the SIM card out and smashes the phone with a hammer. Then she stupidly destroys the SIM card - nooooooooooooo, I yelled, you need to keep the evidence! She hadn't even checked his photos.

So phone and marriage destroyed, Julie pretends that everything is ok for the sake of her son, Dan, who is taking his exams. Once Dan's exams are over, Julie plans to kick Paul out. On a night out with her friends, alcohol loosens Julie's tongue and she tells her friends about Paul's affair. Julie is in quite a state when she gets home and when she wakes up the next day she finds Paul dead in the bed beside her. Julie doesn't even shed a single tear; they have been married for 19 years, surely she should feel something! It made me wonder whether Julie was so emotionless because she had killed Paul in a drunken stupor - the police certainly think so. Julie protests her innocence but as the evidence mounts up against her, she turns to several people for help but it's clear that not all can be trusted.

It's odd that I enjoyed the book but I didn't like Julie at all. I really couldn't cope with her lack of emotions when her husband died and perhaps can see why he ended up having an affair. I loved the feeling of Julie running out of time like sand through an hourglass as she tried to escape the clutches of the police. Once they got their hands on her she'd be going to jail as there was enough evidence to link her to Paul's death. The book really made me think about trust and how we take it for granted that we can trust those closest to us but so many people are multi-faceted and you never know which face is the real one.

All in all, I think The Adulterer's Wife is a fast-paced, compulsive domestic noir style thriller.

I chose to read an ARC and this is my honest and unbiased opinion.

3.5*
Life as she knows it ends for Julie when Paul, her husband of 20 years, forgets his phone and she sees some compromising texts. The only thing that stops her from confronting him straight away is the fact that their son Dan is sitting his final school exams and is stressed enough already. However once they are over she intends to deal with it. Unfortunately for her she never gets the chance because a short time after Paul is found dead and it transpires not from natural causes. Of course the police make Julie their number one suspect and she ends up in a whole heap of trouble. Her nightmare begins!

With a cast of duplicitous and unreliable characters, this story is pure suspense. I didn’t find it easy to engage with Julie and at times found it difficult to get on her side. The story is told from her perspective and there were times when I wanted to shake some sense into her as some of her actions seemed so ridiculous and each bad decision led to another bad outcome. Then, there were other occasions when I felt immense sympathy for her, especially when having to deal with Dan’s grandparents who were not the easiest of in-laws.

The suspense increases throughout the book as we follow Julie’s attempts to find out who killed her husband, leading to a dramatic conclusion. Many of the characters are either unlikeable and/or untrustworthy and when those closest to her distance themselves from her it was clear that she was on her own and it was up to her to prove her innocence.

Having read and enjoyed a few of Leigh’s longstanding police procedural series, I was looking forward to a change of direction with this standalone thriller. I have to be honest. I wasn’t entirely convinced about some aspects of the story; I’m not a fan of first person narratives generally and I think that’s probably why the book didn’t entirely work for me. This is just my personal opinion and other people will have their own preferences. Having said that, I did enjoy it, it was an extremely readable and addictive story and unusually for me, I raced through it in just a few hours.

I understand that this is the author’s first psychological thriller, in which case it gets off to a flying start. I look forward to seeing what she comes up with next time.



My thanks to Sarah Hardy and Bloodhound Books for the tour invite and the ARC to review.

Great story with great characters! Although I did guess the killer early it's still a terrific read. Highly recommended.

The Adulterer’s Wife by Leigh Russell, Leigh has delved into the world of psychological thrillers and grabbed the narrative full force and WoW what a stoater of a read.

The Adulterer’s Wife centres around the death of Julie’s husband Paul, whom the police believe Julie to be the main suspect in his death. Paul was found dead in the marital bed with Julie at his side, unbeknown to her upon waking after a night out with friends she believes he is asleep. What transpires is that Paul is having an affair and Julie doesn’t wish her son to find out until after his exams, as the investigation escalates Julie soon finds out who her friends are. Julie sends her son to his grandparents while she tries to unravel the mysterious death of her husband and clear her name.

Can conviction be avoided, can Julie clear her name, who will stick by Julie, loads of questions needing to be answered and with every turn of the page I came one step closer to finding out. I may have sussed the killer earlier than I expected but there was some damn good twists which still led me a merry little dance.

Leigh wrote The Adulterer’s Wife in a clear and concise manner, allowing me to follow the plotline without becoming over involved in the subtext, leaving me enough to interpret the background and characters, in turn finding discoveries I may have lost out on if the narrative had been over complicated.

The Adulterer’s Wife is not a hard-core psychological thriller with blood guts and gore but an easy read which will enable you to fill your boots with imaginative scenarios and follow the trail of clues scattered throughout the book, to hopefully come to a satisfactory conclusion. Whether you accept your own imaginative answers to who the culprit is anyone’s guess but is that not the way of a psychological thriller, leaving you pondering, rewinding the clues and trying to fathom out where it clicked for you or where you took a wrong turn.

For a first stab at psychological thriller, Leigh has done a damn good job, all that is left for Leigh to do is to go onwards and upwards, I’m sure her next psychological thriller will be bigger and better than the first.

My thanks go to Bloodhound Books, Leigh Russell and Sarah Hardy for the advanced readers copy of The Adulterer’s Wife to read in exchange for an honest and unbiased review. Just another thanks to Sarah for allowing me to be part of the Blog Tour for today.

The Adulterer’s Wife, is Leigh Russell’s first foray into psychological thrillers amid an extremely successful career of writing police procedurals. This is just one of the reasons why I was excited to read this book, I’ve read many authors over long periods of time and I find it thrilling when any choose to move away from their ‘norm’ and embrace a new challenge.

This book is such a thing and it was fabulous, I slipped into the story easily, comfortable in the knowledge of Leigh’s style and pace, but eager to discover this whole new ‘side’ to one of my favourite authors, and I wasn’t disappointed.

Julie’s flawed character might make you question yourself, would you make the decisions she made? Would you have behaved differently? You may think her actions questionable, but how would you react in a similar situation? When a book makes me not only wonder the motivations of the character, but to also ask myself these sorts of questions as I’m reading, I consider that to be a winner.

It’s a definite one sitting read, and perfect for one of those lazy days by the pool, or sunbathing in the garden. You won’t put it down until you are done.

My only lingering thought is that no matter how focused I was on the matters of the day, would I not truly realise my husband was dead?

This is my first read by this author and I loved it.

Julie is left devastated when she finds out her husband Paul has been having an affair. She thinks life can’t get any worse, that is until she finds her husband dead in their bed. Life gets even worse when she finds out she’s the main suspect.

Julie needs to find out who killed Paul but she’s definitely not prepared for what she does find out.

I enjoyed this story and read it in a day. I thought the story was well thought out. I’ll definitely be reading more from this author in the future.

This psychological thriller had me hooked from the start and didn't let me go,until the last page. Julie discovers her husband is having an affair and shortly after husband Paul is found dead in bed and Julie becomes the prime murder suspect. As the plot unfolds there are twists and turns along the way which help kept me on the edge of my seat!

I was definitely intrigued to find out that Leigh Russell had written a standalone psychological thriller as I have really enjoyed her Geraldine Steel and Lucy Hall books in recent years. And after reading The Adulterers Wife, I hope this isn’t a one off and we can look forward to more standalones in the future!

So Julie’s husband leaves his phone at home one day and as many of us would (well, some would anyway!!) she looks at his messages and gets a shock when she sees messages from another woman. But her son is in the middle of his exams and Julie doesn’t want to disrupt this important time for him so decides to leave any decisions about her marriage until the exam period is over. She tells her girlfriends who encourage her to throw the lying cheating creep out and she decides she will. But after waking up from a night out, she discovers him dead in their marital bed. Julie becomes the main suspect in his murder and what follows is a race against time to prove her innocence.

I have to start by saying that Julie wasn’t always the most likeable of characters here and she made some VERY questionable decisions that really didn’t help her cause at all! As a mother I totally got her determination to have her son protected from the fallout of first his fathers adultery and then his death but her over protectiveness became a barrier to her ability to protect herself! And every step forward that Julie took to prove her innocence usually ended up with her taking more than a few steps back as she makes matters worse. In the end she decides to just go ahead and risk everything to find Paul’s murderer. But there are many puzzles for her to unravel first and plenty of shocking twists still to come before the last few gripping pages finally give up their secrets.

Leigh Russell can certainly write an involving and gripping storyline so I was swept away very quickly into the terrifying world of prime suspect number one! I felt every frustration that followed Julie’s hunt for the truth, even though I wanted to scream at her occasionally to stop being so bloody minded!! I think it helped that I felt sorry for her as she seemed to have the most “fair weather” friends in the entire world!! Honestly, surely real friends should be there for you through the good times AND the bad? But no, at the slightest sign of trouble they bailed! And Julie really is then left alone so seeks help in the most unlikely of places.

I would probably like to have seen a little more development of Dan, Julie and Paul’s son, as the mother/son relationship is always an intriguing plot thread for me personally. But the female friendships more than made up for this plus the unusual chemistry between Julie and the private detective that she hired to help her.

All in all this is a very readable book that I sat and devoured in one sunny afternoon. It’s easy to become involved in the characters misfortune even if that involvement does come with a high dose of perverse pleasure from watching other people’s domestic dilemmas. Just remember that you never know what goes on behind closed doors so don’t be as quick to judge as Julie’s friends and family are!

The Adulterers Wife is a nice departure for Leigh Russell but she done so without losing that magic touch her fans have come to expect from her previous books. A well written, fast paced and engaging psychological thriller