The Hunting Wives by May Cobb is an absolute wild ride.

Oh man, there are just some books that make you go, what is happening?? I literally cringed at sections of The Hunting Wives multiple times. This novel is out there for sure. And pretty much all the characters are unlikable and ridiculous. But that’s also part of the fun with this book. You’re supposed to be shocked and maybe even a little outraged. We’ve seen so many times of stories where men behave badly so it was time for some women to step in that ring.

This one is a contemporary style story that slowly devolves into a thriller. We know right away that someone dies. But it takes quite a bit to get to that mystery. And I really thought it was a clever way to handle it, which made this one standout from your typical thriller.

This story goes into bizarre-ville and some scenes were way too much for me. But I was super curious how it will end so it definitely kept my attention. I think if you’re looking for a thriller that has a bit more going on than just a cat-and-mouse game, this is a good choice for you.

I went in thinking this would be a book about a group of mean girls messing with the newbe in the neighborhood, and it was SOOO much more than that.

Hunting Wives is a sexy, suspenseful read about a group of women in Texas who get together for target practice, hard partying, and other bad behavior. The body of a teenage girl shows up in the area they meet and investigation uncovers all kinds of secrets, lies, and half-truths. Readers who enjoyed Big Little Lies will love this book as will anyone who enjoys a fast-paced suspenseful read. I did!! Thanks so much to Net Gally for the ARC.

BONKERS. Crazy, unlikeable characters but what a fun ride! A great beach-read for summer - a super quick read.

I was immediately drawn to this story that had a Big Little Lies & Stepford Wives vibe.

It was a steamy and twisty psychological thriller that I found truly irresistible! Naughty rich woman with guns? What could possibly go wrong!

These woman may be glamorous but they’re also truly wicked and just oozing with dark and juicy secrets.

I absolutely devoured this book that was overflowing with unpredictable plot twists and curveballs that left me continually guessing until the very last page!

This was a great mystery! One that I did not guess at all! The story was well plotted and kept the tension high. The friendships feel ominous, the female friends just feel like danger as they start their night with guns, drinking and always end at some strange unknown location. The feel of disorientation, the constant drinking, kept me wondering if the narrator was reliable and who all I could actually trust in the story. I loved the small town, the isolated feel but also the luxurious lazy way of money with the lake houses and hired help. I thought this one was great! At 75%, I raced through the pages and held my breath the whole way. I loved it!

<i>A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.</i>

Sophie O’Neill and her husband Graham leave behind their stressful lives in Chicago to raise their young son Jack in a small Texas town. Sophie was raised by a single mom who kept them moving from city to city and this tight-knit community felt like home when she was finishing high school, appealing enough for her to want to return.
Now that she’s a stay at home mom with plenty of time to focus on building her own brand and lifestyle blog, Sophie still doesn’t have enough to do to fill her hours while Graham is at work and Jack is at preschool. She’s already restless and bored though a solid relationship and stable home is what she’s craved her entire life.

Sophie meets town socialite Margot Banks and is instantly enamored with her beauty and carefree spirit. She’s invited into the elite clique known as the Hunting Wives and is surprised to find herself caught up in nights of skeet shooting with visits to bars on the edge of town and heavy drinking.
Graham isn’t thrilled about her new hard partying and Sophie realizes these women are a bit more than she bargained for, so she decides it may be time to distance herself from the Hunting Wives. But there’s something that makes Sophie want to be accepted by Margot, a seductive lure she can’t quite seem to tear herself away from.
When a local teen girl is discovered dead from a bullet wound in the same woods where the Hunting Wives meet, Sophie is not only pulled into the murder investigation but finds herself the prime suspect.

Whoa, this book was a guilty pleasure from beginning to end! I could relate to the boredom of the in-between hours of stay at home motherhood and the need for friendship and acceptance …and the rest was like a train wreck I couldn’t stop watching. All the ridiculously bad decisions had me shaking my head and even as Sophie’s life spiraled out of control, she continued to make the absolute worst decisions possible with zero regard for the family she was supposedly terrified to lose. This was frustrating but the pearl-clutching drama itself was so juicy I was racing through the book to find out what over-the-top bad choice would be made next.

Thanks to Berkley and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest review. The Hunting Wives is scheduled for release on May 18, 2021.

A woman moves to a small town in Texas to settle down with her husband and son and instead gets wound up with a group of women that leads to seduction, murder and cheating.

Wanting to give her son a more stable and quiet life, Sophie moves back to the small town where she graduated high school. Having grown up with a vagabond mother and living for a while in the bustling city of Chicago, she finds small town Texas life starting to get a bit boring and life as a stay-at-home mom with a blog not what she pictured. Running into Margot, a rich and hot woman with a tight group of friends, Sophie is immediately drawn to her, wanting to learn all about her and be welcomed into their circle. When she finally gets an in, she soon learns that their girls' night out parties are more than just skeet shooting and drinking wine, it's actually a time to hook up with random strangers at bars and even teenage boys. But Margot's allure is too powerful, and soon Sophie finds herself sinking in, despite many warnings and missteps. And that's when a girl's body is found near Margot's land, and Sophie begins to learn what dangerous company she keeps.

There are plenty of guesses to be had as to who the killer actually is and why it happens. Sophie is extremely naive and a bit self-centered, and is kind of an easy target in this. But it is a compelling story and readers will enjoy where it all goes.

I think the best way for me to garner interest for The Hunting Wives is by just saying it's dramatic! Characters that are almost ridiculous but insanely fun to read with a memorable mystery aspect make this another must-read thriller for 2021.

I don't mind the occasional popcorn thriller, they always just end up being pretty varied in how I end up thinking about them. What The Hunting Wives scores points on is originality, the core premise was well defined and memorable. As long as it's providing new and exciting entertainment, it barely matters to me how unrealistic it might feel at times.

Lots of drama, a little bit less on the mystery end, but that was enough to satisfy my needs for the time being. Your typical "read in one sitting" type of book.

This is a juicy tale full of scandalizing behavior, hotties with guns and more alcohol than an ABC store. But make no mistake, this is also a smartly written thrill ride with characters that are complex, damaged and uncomfortably relatable in their self sabotage.

I recommend this book for fans of domestic thrillers, Desperate Housewives and/or salacious narratives.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 Stars rounded up.

This was such a fun thriller-esk story. Rich women behaving badly, a heroine with some serious issues and murder. The Hunting Wives was a quick read that I sped through in two days. The characters were all pretty rotten but it was still so fun to see how the story played out. I had a feeling on how it was going to go but the ride was pretty great.

The main character was the most frustrating part of the story. She just kept messing up so badly and wondered why everything was happening to her. Additionally, the older adult taking advantage of teenagers thing made me a bit uncomfortable so please keep that in mind if that is a trigger for you.

What an intense, crazy, and unpredictable read!

Trading in the hustle and bustle of city living to one of a quiet nature, Sophie is trying to assimilate into the new way of living. What she doesn’t plan for is missing the lifestyle she left and she seeks out some excitement by way of creating friendships with new ladies in the area. Little does she know what she is getting into.

Thrown into a scandalous and whirlwind of events, you’ll find nothing predictable about Cobb’s novel. It had me creating different theories throughout the read and left so many twists and turns in my wake.

Sophie is obsessed with Margo. She wants to be her, be with her, be noticed by her. So, when Sophie is invited into Margo's secret clique of "The Hunting Wives", she is thrilled. Sophie gets pulled into this secret life of shooting skeet and partying all night until a young girl is found dead in the woods near the cabin where the women meet.

At the beginning of the story, I was really into it. The idea of this woman becoming a part of a clique not intended for outsiders. But, the plot turned sour for me when I found out that there were under age boys involved and when Sophie turned into a character with absolutely no spine.

The way that Sophie looked at her circumstances and how she responded was so infuriating. She acted like she had no choice in what she was doing. Like it was just happening to her and there was nothing she could do. I can't explain how grating on my nerves it was to read her get herself into trouble. And her husband? He was unbelievably understanding. Like, to a fault. Like, there's just no way a real person would be THAT understanding unless they had no skin in the game to begin with. And maybe that was it. But, his constant forgiveness and support made me ball my fists.

The underage boys made this story almost unreadable for me. It was hard to follow as some of these women treated these boys like men. It was stomach turning.

The dead girl found in the woods near the cabin felt like an afterthought in the plot. It felt like it was thrown in at the end of the book to make it a thriller.

Again, just the way these women viewed high school children, both boys and girls was so off putting. I just didn't vibe with this one at all.

This was an entertaining and scandalous domestic thriller about a clique of wives in a Texas town who are up to no good. Our main character Sophie has recently moved to town and becomes enamoured with the head of the clique, Margot, and starts to become part of their group. It is sexy, dark, and crazy - perfect for a reader who devourers domestic thrillers!

3.5 rounded up. Desperate Houswives, Real Housewives, add the Hunting Wives to the woman behaving badly but oh so fun group. While this wasn't the most literary read and did not increase my knowledge in anything useful it was such a delightful ride. Extra star for the refreshing take on rich people behaving badly and for the utter fact that I could not put this book down and flew through it. Hopefully beach vacations become a thing again this summer and this is one to grab for that beach bag. I could not have picked a better time to insert this delightful book in between some heavier books. This book was such entertaining fun.

***A huge thank you to Berekely Pub and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this ARC for my honest review.

The Hunting Wives by May Cobb was such an engaging, entertaining read! I flew through this book. The story was deliciously twisty and scandalous and I loved it. I kept turning the pages to find out what was going on. May Cobb did a great job creating characters that were interested and well-developed thought certainly not likeable. I went into this book blind and I highly recommend that readers do the same. I was surprised by the plot over and over as I read. This would be a fun one to read and discuss with a book club. If you're a fan of addictive and twisted thrillers, grab a copy of this one!

I received an ARC of this title from the publisher via NetGalley which did not affect the contents of my review. All opinions are voluntary, honest, and my own.

The Hunting Wives by May Cobb is a superb and engrossing read which will keep you reading until the end. Well worth the read!

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this and was ultimately quite surprised. It is deliciously wicked with women who drink, flirt, shoot and push boundaries well past their limits. The characters are all unsympathetic and despicable but highly entertaining. The writing is addictive and held my attention from the start and the plot moved through the entirety at breakneck speed. I liked how the author was not afraid to take her characters to deep, dark places and found this aspect to be both unique and interesting. I did figure out the ending about 75% of the way through but this did not detract from my overall enjoyable reading experience. An overall, fast, fun, entertaining read.

Sophie has recently moved to a small Texas town with her husband and son. She has her solid friend Erin, but Sophie quickly becomes obsessed with the local queen bee, Margot. When Margot invites her to their ladies night out, Sophie is ecstatic, though she quickly realizes she didn’t fully understand what she signed on for. That doesn’t keep her from waiting to be included though. When a local teen goes missing and winds up dead, Sophie soon learns what position her friendship with Margot has put her in with the investigation.

Holy high school girls disguised as adults! I always love my adults behaving badly and let me tell you, this was adults behaving badly to the extreme. I so badly wanted to shake Sophie and be like “can you not see these people are not your friends and are truly awful?” I think we have all known a Margot, but at this point in my life I want nothing to do with her! I understand how Sophie got so wrapped up in the group of ladies, but man were these chicks brutal. I also cringed every time one of the ladies was hooking up with an underage boy! If you liked Big Little Lies, run, don’t walk, to preorder this book! It was so fabulous, I couldn’t stop reading until I found out what would happen!

Alluring, Astounding, and Absolutely Addictive!

Thank you to @berkleypublishinggroup and @netgalley for the eARC of The Hunting Wives by May Cobb! The cover alone had me from the get go. But when I started reading this, I could not put it down!

Sophie and her husband Graham have moved to a small town in Texas from Chicago. When Sophie meets Margot she immediately is drawn to her and her group of friends. Soon Sophie is asked to join The Hunting Club on a Friday night at Margot's house. What she discovers is a group of women who are living on the edge and it's just what Sophie needs in her life right now. With regret, Sophie finds herself looking forward to her Friday nights But, Sophie soon discovers that this group is hiding secrets; not just from her but from one another. Soon, there will be a murder in this small town and one of these wives will be the prime suspect.

This is an enticing read full of suspense and drama and I couldn't get enough of it! This one will be hot off the press on May 18, 2021! I'm pretty sure it's gonna a hit!