The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth was such an intriguing domestic thriller.

Rachel and Tully are shocked to learn that their father is marrying a woman half his age...while still married to his wife. Granted, his wife lives in a home and has advanced dementia. But Stephen and Heather appear to be in love.

Heather is getting the life she always wanted. Loving husband, big family, home on the beach. Everything is as it should be. But whenever Heather drinks, she notices that she is blacking out and waking up with injuries. Stephen always explains how she got them, but Heather is worried something else is happening.

Rachel is the younger daughter, with a successful baking career. So what if she has a trauma hidden away by many cakes and calories? She is fine. She is trying to be supportive of her dad's new relationship, when she find a hot water bottle of almost a hundred grand stashed away by her mother. She can't ask her mother what it means, and Rachel wonders if her mother was saving this money secretly for a reason.

Tully is the oldest, and very neurotic. She can't fathom how her father is moving on so quickly, and when she is anxious, her kleptomania gets worse. Tully is facing financial problems of her own, while trying to entertain this new relationship.

Everyone's worlds collide at the wedding. Tragedy strikes and someone is hurt.

I was very invested in this book and the characters. I liked the twist ending, but also wanted more detail. I felt like aspects of each daughter's life didn't come full circle and I was left with unanswered questions. But as usual, Sally Hepworth's writing is wonderful and pulls you in. Her family dynamics are always so interesting and she paints the picture so well.

Source: DRC via NetGalley (St. Martin’s Press)
Pub. Date: April 5, 2022
Synopsis: Goodreads

Why did I choose to read this book?

I read Hepworth’s The Good Sister and was blown away by her writing, so when The Younger Wife started showing up on those “most anticipated” lists, I put in a request. I haven’t read any of Hepworth’s work prior to The Good Sister though, so I may do that just to see if this has always been her style.

What is this book about?

At its heart, this book is about trauma, abuse, and survival. Every single main character in this book (all female other than the dad, Stephen) has been abused or is exhibiting behaviors that would indicate some kind of trauma in their past. Heather, Stephen’s new fiancee, is introduced as a child of domestic abuse right from the get go, but she hasn’t revealed this to Stephen. Stephen’s wife (ex-wife) Pam is in a nursing home with early-onset dementia. Tully (one of Stephen’s daughters) is a kleptomaniac, and Rachel (his other daughter) is a compulsive eater (but thankfully not bulimic, she’s described as gorgeous with amazing curves and never, not once, does any other character imply that she needs to lose weight or eat less).

At the basic plot level, this book is about how Stephen’s family copes with his current wife Pam’s mental decline and his new fiancee happening at the same time, with the extra spice of old man dates woman younger than his children tossed in for good measure. You’ll eventually learn all their secrets, and get to the true source of all their dysfunctions. You will be surprised along the way, and you won’t be disappointed by how things shake out.

What is notable about the story?

I loved that Hepworth approaches trauma and coping mechanisms as normal. Sometimes you don’t get over or get past the trauma, you can only manage its effects. Some coping mechanisms are harmful and others are just tools, and the characters in this story definitely help you explore when to ask for help, and when to just keep swimming.

Another aspect of Hepworth’s writing that I also found lovely in The Good Sister is her presentation of people that we might be extra judgmental about as normal people in society that deserve our time, support, and sympathy. The setting of the story recognizes the COVID pandemic and its effects on individuals and small businesses, so certain B-level characters who might appear as “lazy unemployed people who should get a job!” are just trying to get through the trauma of that too by doing the best they can. At every level, this story asks us to see other people through the lens of their trauma, in an effort to both understand and support them. Simply beautiful concepts.

Was anything not so great?

In terms of writing or story progression, there was nothing wrong with this book. I picked it up and didn’t want to stop reading. There are a LOT of trauma triggers in here though, and so while this is not a criticism, I want to let you know that there is a WHOLE lot going on in this book relative to domestic abuse, gaslighting, and abuse and so if you’re significantly triggered by that due to your own experiences, tread lightly and don’t worry if you have to put the book down for a bit.

What’s the verdict?

I think I’m going 4/4.5 stars on this one. It wasn’t as good as The Good Sister but it was still really good! If you like messy families who just want to do better but don’t know how, thrillers where the bad guy could be anyone, and revenge on behalf of women wronged, then you need to go and get this book.

From the disastrous wedding scene opener to the controversial, ambiguous ending, The Younger Wife is a propulsive, character driven story that delves deeply into the psychological mindset of three highly unreliable narrators who second guess themselves every step of the way. Easily manipulated, all three women suffer from self-doubt over what is reality and what is a hallucinatory dream making it nigh on impossible for readers to know who and what to believe. The end result is a hard to put down domestic thriller overladen with dark family drama.

The Younger Wife opens in the present with a tense, confusing, disaster-in-the-making wedding in a jam packed standing room only setting. This scene is narrated by an unknown guest who's observations presage the unfortunate events to come and introduce the main players to readers in a chaotic setting that later becomes a disorderly crime scene. However, most of the story takes place in the past as it occured through the eyes of neurotic sisters Tully and Rachel and their absurdly young, soon to be mother-in-law Heather. Readers learn early on that these three women each harbor dark secrets that led to compulsive disorders in their youth that continue to plague their present lives and roles as daughters, sisters, wives and/or mothers. As the story unfolds, readers learn just how damaged and self-destructive each character is as well as who may be using their own weaknesses against them.

Before the wedding: When handsome sixty-something heart surgeon Stephen Aston announces his engagement to the very beautiful, half-his-age Heather, his daughters Rachel and Tully are flabbergasted. First, the bride-to-be is younger than they are so what are her motives in marrying an old man? and second, their mother, Steven's wife Pam, is still very much alive although living in a nursing home while being treated for dementia. The sisters are even more distressed to learn their father will divorce their mother Pam in order to marry Heather. In moments of coherency, remarks made by their mother make the sisters question what kind of man their father really is. Some scenes between Stephen and Heather will have readers asking themselves the same thing. Doubt and mistrust between all characters is established early and sets a malicious undertone that drives the pace at an ever increasing rate. Short scenes from the wedding are interspersed throughout the story bringing readers out of the past to reinforce what's happening in the present at the calamity of a wedding before transporting them back to the past. Throughout it all, truths about these highly dysfunctional characters emerge piece by piece as they each run around putting out fires while trying to keep their skeletons in the closet.

After the wedding: Oh yes . . . we finally get to the ambiguous ending - the culmination of all the chaos, confusion and misdirection. It seems it's become a bit controversial among arc reviewers. So much so that apparently a paragraph has been added to the Epilogue that may or may not clarify some things. I read an early arc which features an open-ended, ambiguous ending that calls on readers to form their own conclusion. While these endings are frustrating to many, I think if the right foundation's been laid, it can be entertaining for a few threads to be left dangling with a half-tied bow forcing readers to sort through the convoluted chaos and form their own opinion. Sally Hepworth is quite an expert in writing complex, character driven stories that are substantial in family drama and light on suspense. She's also quite brilliant at leaving readers with a questionable ending. I highly recommend The Younger Wife to fans of domestic suspense and family drama.

The Younger Wife was such a wild ride. It's about this family, with two grown daughters (Tully and Rachel) and a mom (Pam) who is in a nursing home with dementia. Next thing they know, dad (Stephen) is divorcing mom and getting married to a woman (Heather) who is younger than both Tully and Rachel. First of all, I would be flipping out if I was Tully and Rachel, but I think they accepted that they were in very unusual circumstances with their mother and wanted Dad to be happy. We follow the perspectives of Tully, Rachel and Heather., and we spend a lot of time getting to know these ladies and their lives as they each struggle with serious vices. We also alternate timelines with the day of the wedding between Stephen and Heather, where someone got seriously hurt, but we don't yet know who.

I was sucked into this book from start to finish. I loved the insane perspectives from each of our main ladies. I loved how much care the author put into each of their own stories. We spend so much of the story trying to figure out of Stephen is a domestic abuser or not and if he was gaslighting those he loved. What I really loved about this story was how much I felt just as confused as the girls. I was feeling so confident and then I felt gaslight too (not in a bad way, I just couldn't help falling for unreliable narrators).

For once, I'm really glad I wasn't able to get to this arc on time before release. The ending was.... bad in the arc. When I finished the book and saw that the published ending was altered, I got really excited and started digging everywhere to find it. The unpublished ending was extremely open-ended and made the women look absolutely crazy. We don't love that, especially as someone who has been trapped in a controlling relationship. I felt like it did the women dirty, and we're past that in 2022. After reading the published ending, I was much more satisfied with the changes the author made. It didn't explicitly say "this is the answer", but it was much more satisfying and gave us the answer we were looking for. This change in ending bumped my original star review up half a point.

Overall, I give this book a 4/5 stars. I highly recommend it if you're interested in a domestic phycological thriller. Thanks to NetGalley and the Publisher for sending me an advanced ecopy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

3.5*
**SPOILERS**The book was easy to get through but overall a little boring. The big plot point became clear by about the middle of the story and didn't really develop from there. The narrative was off for me because all three of our storytellers were extremely honest from the beginning and then all of a sudden by the middle, they were questioning themselves for no reason. There were tons of logical steps each woman could have taken (Heather getting cameras in the house, Tully and Rachel actually asking people straightforward questions) and then there was a weird time jump just to get to the wedding. Overall it was fine, and while I see that the ending was supposed to play into the cloudiness of the story, to me it was just uneventful. Liked the characters, wish they would have had a better story.

The beginning of this book really pulls you in! At a wedding and someone screams - someone's dead??
The idea of this book was interesting. A wife with demetia whose husband (who happens to be a wealthy heart surgeon) wants to divorce her for someone much much younger and the two adult daughters are trying to cope and come to terms with everything. The story is told by the three women and the family secrets begin to unravel.
This is my second book from this author and I have loved them both!

Sally Hepworth has a delft hand with domestic suspense and The Younger Wife is a good example of that talent. The story revolves around a family that is split by the dementia-afflicted mother--with the" still married" father who has a girlfriend younger than his own daughters, and two daughters with various problems of their own-- even the girlfriend has issues. Secrets abound between this members of the family and the girlfriend, too. I especially enjoyed having everyone's individual perspective spelled out. The pace is fast, the plot is twisted, and the characters are quirky enough to keep the pages turning. A really good read.
Thanks to NetGalley and Kensington Publishing for granting my request and sending me an e-copy ARC to read and offer an honest review.
#TheYoungerWife #NetGalley #Kensington

I loved this book! I had read a few reviews that were split on the ending, but I personally enjoyed it. I explained this book as predictable but different to a friend.

The switching between various family members, all who are unreliable narrators, was fantastic. It kept me on my toes and I devoured this book in one sitting. I loved The Mother In Law by Sally Hepworth and this one was just good if not better!

Thanks so much to the author and St. Martin's Press for my gifted, advanced physical copy, as well as NetGalley for the e-copy, in exchange for my honest thoughts. All opinions are entirely my own. { partner } All of my reviews can also be found on Instagram @Tackling_TBR and on my blog at tacklingtbr.home.blog

TW: murder, sexual assault/rape, domestic abuse/violence, miscarriage/anembryonic pregnancy, loss of parents, dementia/Alzheimer’s, addiction (alcoholism, kleptomania, binge eating), gaslighting, and COVID-19

I was so excited to be receiving an early copy of this book, because I have really loved books by Sally Hepworth in the past. And I really and truly wanted to love this book. For the first third or so I really was enjoying it - it was suspenseful at times and messing with my brain a little bit, in the way you expect a book with potentially unreliable narrators to. But by the end I really couldn't get behind this book.

For the most part the characters were interesting and flawed and felt realistic and human. I will say that I had a hard time relating to or sympathizing too much with Tully, but I've never dealt with kleptomania or any related addictions, so maybe she would be a perfectly written and relatable character to someone with more of those shared experiences. I found myself liking and relating to Rachel the most, though. She seemed to be the audience surrogate to a certain extent - she was the one putting some of the pieces together and trying to get to the bottom of the mystery, so I enjoyed her chapters the most.

Now let's get into what I didn't like about this book - I feel like there is a fine line between an unreliable narrator and gaslighting all of the characters (and therefore the audience) to the point that even by the last page nobody trusts or believes their own memories or understanding. A book can have an ending that is left up to interpretation without making it seem like all of the women in the book are out of their minds, you know? By the end of this book it felt a bit like the takeaway was that women, and particularly abused women, can't be trusted to know their own minds or to understand what is happening to and around them. I know that that couldn't have been what the author was trying to get across, but from an outside perspective, that was how it felt after closing the book, and it felt a bit gross.

I will say that I have heard through the grapevine that there is an added portion in the final copy of the book that completely changes the outcome of the story. Both of my gifted copies were the advanced, unfinalized version, so I have not seen this new addition. While I would be interested in picking up a final copy and reading this added paragraph to see if it changes my feelings towards the book, unfortunately at this time I can only review based on what I have read.

Overall I'm not sure that I would recommend this book to my friends, and if I did I would make my feelings stated above very clear in the same breath as the recommendation. I think that the book is well written and I'm sure that there are people who would love it. And like I said, maybe if I read that added bit in the final copy then it would change my opinion a bit as well. But at this time I don't see myself returning to this book or recommending it very highly, without knowing outright that the person I'm talking to would love it.

I know that when I pick up a Sally Hepworth novel, I’m in for a solid family drama. The Younger Wife is no exception. I really enjoyed this one, start to finish!

Dear Reader, you are cordially invited to attend the wedding of Heather and Stephen. An albeit unconventional affair as Stephen's recently divorced wife, Pam, will be in attendance. Their adult daughters are the same age as the bride and most of those in attendance are there for the gossip, not the happy couple. When a scream is heard from inside the sanctuary and the celebrant emerges covered in blood everyone is left to speculate what happened. Ambulances are called, guests are asked to leave and an investigation begins. Any of them could be the victim, any of them could be at fault. When a family has the amount of secrets buried that the Astons do, someone was eventually bound to snap. There is not a likable character among the lot in "The Younger Wife" and it really makes for quite the page-turner. You have no idea who to root for at any given time and the ending (at least in the ARC) version leaves you feeling unsettled and unsure. If you are looking for a twisty read, give "The Younger Wife" a try. Thank you to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review will be posted on 4/19/2022
Pamela is married to Stephen Aston, a successful heart surgeon. They have two beautiful daughters, and live in a gorgeous house that they are remodeling, but no matter how perfect Pam's life is, she can't fight the early on-set dementia that is slowly tightening its grip on her. Stephen, her husband, hired Heather, an interior designer, to help bring Pam's vision to life, but slowly Pam is losing herself and Stephen has to put her into a nursing home. This breaks his heart and he finds himself being consoled by Heather. As time goes on, sparks fly between the two despite the fact that Heather is young enough to be his daughter. This blows his daughters' minds as Heather is their age and his new relationship with her feels wildly inappropriate considering their mother is still alive! The eldest daughter, Tully, has her own issues to deal with as she recently found out that her husband made a bad investment and they are losing all their money. Plus, she has a slight problem: she likes to steal things. Then there's her younger sister, Rachel, who is a beautiful baker, but she eats her feelings due to the fact that she hasn't dealt with the trauma from her childhood. All of these tragically flawed characters coming together makes for a very dramatic domestic suspense from Sally Hepworth, especially when Stephen announces his upcoming marriage to Heather right when Pam starts suggesting Stephen isn't the nice guy they thought he was. The Younger Wife, while isn't as compelling as Hepworth's The Good Sister, is still a suspenseful, fast moving novel despite my issues with it.

Hepworth is really good at creating tragically flawed characters that I find myself still rooting for even though I don't always agree with their decisions. She makes me care about them and that's how I felt about Tully. Her world is being turned up side down, she will have to move out of her beautiful home, and she has her own mental health issues while raising two little boys. I was worried how all this stress might play out for her, not to mention the fact that her mother keeps divulging information about her father and the information starts to raise some questions for Tully. Is Pam just rattling on or is there some truth to her secrets?

It was pretty easy to see where Hepworth was going with Rachel and her trauma in The Younger Wife. She hasn't dealt with her issues, so now she eats too much as a way of coping with difficult things in her life. Rachel has always been the beautiful one, but she has a lot of baggage. She is more accepting of Heather than Tully, but she also starts questioning things when she finds a load of cash hidden in her mom's water bottle with a note. What was Pam saving for? Was she trying to leave Stephen?

Heather is also a complex and troubled character in The Younger Wife mostly because she also has unresolved issues from her childhood. When she moves in with Stephen (to the house she helped design!), things are blissful until she starts to realize that he controls her a bit and comments frequently on her clothing, how much she drinks, her version of a story, etc. Things also get dark at times, and she starts questioning her sanity. Is it her and her unresolved issues or is it Stephen? I found myself trying to figure out if she was an unreliable narrator, especially when Heather starts questioning herself. Also, I wasn't sure I could care about a character like Heather who dated a married man, but surprisingly, Hepworth found a way to make me care!

The Younger Wife is a soapy domestic suspense novel that I thought was decent overall, but the ending left me feeling let down. I hear that the official ending in the published novel is different than the ARC which I read, so that makes me feel better. I tried to take that into consideration with my review as my main issue with the novel is the last 10% of it. Nonetheless, if you enjoy domestic suspense and are a fan of Hepworth, readers won't be too disappointed by this novel as it is very fast moving and I was hooked as I wanted to know what would happen to these complex and complicated women.

So, are you a fan of Hepworth's novels? Have you read The Younger Wife? Is it on your TBR list? Let me know in the comments below.

Sally Hepworth is the master at developing characters that you just can’t be sure of. In The Good Sister, you weren’t really sure who was the good sister. In The Younger Wife, you know who the younger wife is, but you’re not sure about the other wives and the husband.

Pretty much everyone in the book has secrets.

The story opens with an unknown narrator at a wedding. A wedding where there has obviously been some sort of violent event. It’s the wedding of Stephen and Heather (the younger wife.) Present at the wedding are Stephen’s grown daughters, Tully and Rachel, and his ex-wife Pamela.

After the opening the story continues from the perspectives of Rachel, Tully and Heather.

I love Sally Hepworth, I love the twists and turns of her stories, I love that you never really quite know what to believe.

A final note - there might be some triggers in here for some - domestic violence and kleptomania.

Thank you to Netgally and the publishers for this ARC.

This book was a surprise with many twists and turns along the way. Sally Hepworth always seems to have surprises in store with how you expect the book to proceed. As with some of her others books, the plot is much more involved than a domestic novel about a May-December marriage.

The story is told in flashbacks. and the novel begins at the wedding of Stephen to Heather, a much younger woman. Stephen's daughters, Tully and Rachel are older than the bride. Stephen's wife, Pamela has dementia so he has to divorce her to marry Heather. That is a plot in itself, however, the novel is much more than that.

Every character in this book has secrets that come out during the course of this story. The twists just keep coming to the very end.

I enjoyed the novel very much. It was well-written and thought-provoking. Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for giving me early access to this interesting book.

I flew through this domestic thriller (read it in one sitting)! It was well paced and flowed easily between multiple characters. There were enough aspects of intrigue sprinkled through the book to keep certain aspects of the plot unknown until the very end. I hadn’t read a book by Hepworth before, so I will definitely need to pick up another of her novels ASAP!
I would highly recommended this satisfying read!

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an ARC of this novel!

The novel, The Younger Wife, kept me guessing all the way to the end.

The story revolves around sisters Tully and Rachel, their father Stephen, Stephen's ex-wife Pam, and Stephen's younger soon-to-be wife Heather.

I went into this story thinking this will be another story about a gold digging younger wife. I was wrong! "Most" of the characters are good but flawed people. The novel keeps you guessing who is the bad apple. There is plenty of gaslighting and unreliable characters which prolongs the reveal. For example, Pam has dementia and a few of the characters drink too much.

Who do you trust? Read this well-written thriller and find out! This is my 1st Sally Hepworth novel -- I can't wait to dig into her backlist!

Big thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this advanced readers copy!

Heather and Stephen are happily in love. At least that's what she thought. As the soon-to-be new wife, she wasn't sure how his two adult daughters, both of which are older than her, would react to their relationship. Things have been touch and go to say the least, but they seem to have had a breakthrough after a cozy day-drinking session. But other things are afoot in her shiny new life, and she can't help feel that old patterns are apt to repeat. Can she trust her instincts? Can she trust herself? Only time will tell. ⁠
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I was hooked on this one from the start, page flippin' as quickly as I could to find out what the heck happened at that wedding!?! Sadly, my curiosity didn't pay off as much as I’d hoped. I really loved the character and story development, as well as the flashback sequencing. But the ending fell so flat. I've heard that the ending in the published version has been changed, so now I have to get a copy just to see if the changes Hepworth made will change my star rating. This was my first Hepworth novel, and I know it won't be my last. I loved her writing style and could easily have given this a higher star rating if the ending hit differently. The sisters in this book are so flawed that it's flawless! I wanted to wrap them both up in my arms and give them the love and reassurance they both needed. Overall, this book is worth reading so I encourage you to get your hands on a published copy soon!

The book opens with the wedding of Stephen and Heather, a much younger woman. They met when she redecorates his house. Then there is a scream and the story goes back to Stephen announcing to his daughters that he is getting married to Heather, the woman he has brought to their lunch. Stephen Aston is a 60 something attractive physician who is getting married to a much younger woman. The thing is, he is already married. Pam has dementia, so he divorces her, even though he claims he still loves her. He asks his daughters, Tully and Rachel to be bridesmaids. Tully is married with 2 young children but their family is having financial issues and Rachel is single woman with a thriving cake baking business. Neither is happy about the wedding. As we get to know more about this family, you wonder how this wedding ever came about.

The Younger Wife is a story of flawed characters with all kinds of different issues to deal with. I really enjoyed that the story is told through various POVs as well as an unknown narrator at the beginning. The story introduces us to a family that seems perfect from the outside, but as we get to know the characters, it is evident that they are dealing with so many issues. I wanted to scream at Heather to run quickly in the opposite direction. Without giving anything away, I will tell that some of the issues being dealt with by the various characters are kleptomania, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, dementia, poverty, difficult children, social appearances, getaway money and more. This was another winning domestic suspense novel from Sally Hepworth. The characters were so well developed and interesting, even though they were unlikable. I know a lot of people didn't like the ending, but I thought it fit well, poetic justice maybe...

This was a wonderful book. Stephen is a doctor married to Pam. They have two daughters. Tully is married with 2 sons and Rachel is running a catering business. Pam develops Alzheimers and Stephen divorces Pam to marry Heather, who is about the ages of his daughters. We learn the backgrounds and secrets of the family. They all add to and lead into a fascinating plot and turn of events. I found myself unliking characters and then changing my mind. Any book by Sally Hepworth is outstanding!!

I feel like it's been a while since I've read a suspense book that really was really gripping. Right from the beginning, this story had a hold on me. So much so, I was sneaking in pages whenever possible!

I loved the multiple POVs here from the four women and the dynamics that played out. I was really pulled in by the suspense set right at the beginning and how it was teased out little by little. Lots of trigger warnings with this one!

The ending definitely presents an opportunity for discussion with friends or a book club! It left me with a lot of questions and scratching my head. I understand that the ending was rewritten between ARC release and release of the physical copy. I downloaded my ARC late and I'm so curious as to which ending I read!! If you've read this, let's discuss!!

My one fault of the book is the portrayal of abused women being discounted due to their mental health and gaslit into believing that it is actually a psychological issue. I guess it's needed for the plot but it still makes me uncomfortable (and it's a very used plot).

Overall, great page turning domestic suspense!! Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the e-copy in exchange for my review.