Byron and his wife Claire have been married for 2 years. Byron is 47 and Claire is 27. Byron's first wife, Colleen, disappeared. The police believe it was a suicide after her car is found near a lake and a suicide note is found. Strangely women around Byron seem to disappear. There has been a lot of gossip at the college where Byron is a professor. When Byron starts acting differently toward Claire she becomes concerned and starts investigating his past.

Thank you Netgalley and Grand Central Publishing for the opportunity to read and review this book.
General Fiction (Adult)
Expected Release Date: July 9, 2019

I was due for a thriller. And genre going like it does, odds are it would be a female authored female driven one. And odds are it would feature split narrative, some sort of relationship drama and a female protagonist under duress. So yeah, Starter Wife checks all the boxes, it doesn’t aim to reinvent the wheel, in fact it seems cobbled together out of various LEGOs of genre building materials, but then…it works. And quite well. And does so mainly by hinging its plot on a narrator so hysterically unreliable and certifiably insane that it’s kind of amusing to behold. Claire is an ambitious young woman, albeit the sum of her ambition is to be a perfect wife to a much older sexy English professor and eventually a perfect mother to his babies. And she will pursue that goal with a maddening and terrifying determination. Professor’s first wife is gone by the way of mysterious suicide, but she didn’t count, Claire considered her just a starter wife, while Claire herself is the real deal. If only the world would cooperate, if only she got pregnant as expected, if only her temper stayed in check, if only her memory was more reliable and her drinking more under control and her dearly beloved more amorous…but alas, Claire’s world isn’t perfect so she will force it to be. At any cost. So it’s a sort of woman going off the rails suspense thriller, cheesy in a way, but very entertaining for what it is and plotted more intricately than you might initially think. No likeable characters really, no one to engage, no one you especially want to come out on top, but then again it isn’t that sort of a story. This is a tale of obsession gone wrong (as opposed to what, though, really…an obsession gone right?) and, ignoring the clichés, it was surprisingly fun. Not to mention a very quick read. Thanks Netgalley.

Picked this up to read a few pages was drawn in couldn’t put down,Nina Lauren is a new author to me her characters writing style is perfect for me and I look forward to reading more from her.#netgalley #Grandcentralpublishing,