We meet Alice (present) and Nellie (past) and see how their lives as domestic housewives is the same in some ways and different in others. I enjoyed the recipes between chapters - though some sounded outright gross! The rules on how to be a "perfect wife" were quite outdated but I think that was the point! I felt bad for Nellie and the way she was treated. I liked the growth that she experienced through the book. The end of the book left me with some questions that I wish I could find out about for some closure!

If this book was Nellie alone, I would have loved it. Alice and Nate are completely unlikeable and the present storyline is a whole mess. All of the past chapters are great

Free copy from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

Sorry I could not finish this book in time. I will get a copy and try to read. Thank you for the opportunity.

Great story with characters that bring it to life. Definitely one to jump on if you love a good tail. I really enjoyed it from the get go.

Just had a great discussion about this @girlybookclub April book pick with a great global group of women.

This is a book about Nellie, married in the 50s and Alice, married in the 2010s. The story compares and contrasts the roles of both wives and their husbands in time periods with almost black and white ideas of marriage.

The characters were inspiring and the book was thrilling. Some of the marriage advice was comical. Devoured every bit of it.

This book didn't work for me. I wanted to just reach out and shake the two main characters the entire time! The were both idiots kind of often. Alice was so submissive with her husband, then the whole birth control thing happened and I couldn't believe their relationship was so messed up. I liked Nellie's storyline a little bit better, because I was waiting to find out when her husband would die from the poison and what would happen then. Overall I just didn't like this one at all.

Loved the dual pov made the book way more interesting. Also liked seeing the two different times compared.

What an interesting concept. I loved the dual characters and settings. It was very tongue-in-cheek and I adored every page. It was hard to read sometimes, but so evocative of many relationships I know. I enjoyed it and will look for more by this author.

After an incident at work Alice finds herself without a job and moving away from her beloved city to the suburbs with her husband who has very much decided it is time for them to start a family. Their new home and endless amount of free time has left Alice feeling uneasy and unaware of who she is anymore. The house needs so many repairs and updates - its constantly freezing, the kitchen hasn't been updated since the 50s and the amount of wallpaper that needs to be stripped feels never ending. One afternoon while she is down in the basement looking for painting supplies Alice comes across boxes that belonged to the previous owner. Inside she finds magazines and a cookbook from 1955. Determined to give this homemaker thing a serious try, Alice begins to cook her way through Nellie's cookbook and along the way uncovers some of her secrets hidden within the pages. As she reads on Alice discovers that Nellie's perfect exterior shielded a life behind closed doors that was anything but. Nellie's confessions begin to cause Alice to question the foundation of her own marriage while lessons from the past help her gain stronger clarity as to what path in life she wants to walk down. Told in dual timelines through Alice and Nellie's eyes, "Recipe for a Perfect Wife" was a hit for me. I didn't have any expectations going into this book but found it to be a quick read that had me invested from the start, though the topics in this book will not be for everyone. I loved the recipes and advice from the 50s sprinkled in at the start of each new chapter. What a different world we are living in now! Give this one a try if you are looking for something new to add to your TBR list. Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Publishing for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I didn't enjoy this book at all. I found the main character to be unrelatable-- she constantly lied to her husband, but was presented as a victim. I wouldn't recommend this book to any one.

Each chapter began with a piece of advice for women from books/magazines written in the late 19th or early 20th century...these were the most enjoyable part of the book. By enjoyable, I mean it was eye opening and horrifying to read the advice that women were given on how to be the perfect wife and made me glad to live in an age where it's ok to be a strong, single woman.

I found both Alice and Nellie to be underdeveloped characters who were very one dimensional and weak for most of the book. Because of this, I did not relate to, nor care about either of them. The many secrets and lies had me rolling my eyes. For the first 2/3 of the book, I was bored and probably would have put it down if I weren't reading it for book club.

About 2/3 of the way into the book, it did pick up and Alice and Nellie got a little more interesting. However, I was still underwhelmed by the ending. I'm happy that I finished it, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! I loved that most chapters we switched between Alice and Nellie's POV. I thought the recipes at the beginning of each chapter was fun; I will probably never make any of them but it was cool to see the recipes.

This book was a quick read and told an interesting story. Highly recommend this book to anyone that wants a page-turner.

Really like the historical fiction aspect of this book combined with the present day story of a young couple (dual story lines). Enjoyed that at the start of each chapter there was a recipe. Provided an interesting take on society's expectation/views of women when they become a wife.

Received for girly book club from publisher. Thank you very much. Interesting book wish it focused more on the earlier story than modern woman.

Really really good book! But what do you expect from Karma Brown? I kept thinking about this book long after I read it, wondering what the characters were doing now. There are books you read where the characters start to feel like friends and that happened for me with this book

I do enjoy dual timeline books. I gave this book a 3 and had a hard time getting through it. I didn’t find anything that connected me to either Nellie or Alice.

I am not sure if this was supposed to be suspenseful as it wasn’t.

Wonderful story that allowed a glimpse into the life of women in the fifties. I loved the recipes as they reminded me so much of some of the dishes that my mother used to make.
Having Karma visit the Grimsby Author Series was an added bonus as she brought the story to life through the sharing of the 'cookbook' she refers to in the book.

I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2021 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2021/02/2021-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

Alice and her husband Nate have just left NYC for life in the suburbs. Alice is very unsure about leaving the big city, but they think they're ready to start a family, and she's just left her high-powered PR job, and really she can't think of a reason to say no. So off they go, moving in to Nellie's house. Of course, Alice and Nellie will never meet, since Nellie's been dead for a year, but Alice will come to feel like she knows Nellie, after discovering a cache of letters and old magazines that Nellie left behind.

What follows is a not-unpredictable, but still satisfying, alternating of chapters. Nellie and Alice are both keeping secrets from their husbands, but what are they and whose secrets will be found out and whose secrets may prove deadly? The tension ramps up deliciously through the middle of the book, although Brown is a little heavy-handed with some of the clues. Put together, the stories form two different, yet not altogether dissimilar looks at the inside of marriage, that though they may be 50+ years apart, may send that message that plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Told from the perspective of two different wives, living in the same house decades apart, this book was intended to be a commentary on the suffocating lives of women, and how little we've seemingly progressed despite supposedly living in a more feminist society than the 1950s.

But unfortunately I just couldn't connect with either character. Nellie, with a picture perfect life from the outside, but married to an abusive man, and unable to leave him. And Alice, hiding so many secrets from her husband, and both wishing for and dreading settling into a role as a housewife. Alice finds an old cookbook of Nellie's and becomes fascinated with learning more about her life.

I think the plot was quick enough to keep me turning the pages, but I was so frustrated with everyone's actions. This book was not for me, but I think it had a lot to recommend itself to others. Note: I received a digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.