Hepworth is a must read author for me and I always enjoy her novels. I hate to play favorites, but The Younger Wife takes the cake for me. Family drama, suspense, quirky characters, and a plot that made me second guess myself the entire way through really sealed the deal for me!

The novel opens at Stephen and Heather's wedding, a seemingly happy affair. But when the happy couple, Stephen's ex wife, and his two daughters exit the church to finalize the paperwork after the ceremony, the guests hear an awful thud and a blood curdling scream. Unclear who is the victim, who is the perpetrator (if there is one), or what possibly happened behind closed doors, the book slowly reveals through each character what led to that fateful day.

I could not put this novel down. Told from various perspectives and alternating between the lead up to the wedding day and the wedding itself, I just couldn't get enough. I loved the family drama, bizarre relationships, flawed characters, and all of the secrets. Everyone seemed to be hiding something and it kept me second guessing myself even after I flipped the final page.

Hepworth always ties in important themes and unique subplots and The Younger Wife is no different. Between Heather's possible alcoholism and troubled past, Tully's kleptomania, Rachel's trauma from being raped, and their mother's dementia, each character was relatable and human on their own and as a group, formed a really gripping cast.

As in true Hepworth style, much of this novel reads as a contemporary fiction. But under the surface, something is brewing and nothing is as it seems.

If you've enjoyed Hepworth's prior novels or just love a solid family drama, this is one that cannot be missed.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for a copy of this novel.

The Younger Wife by a new to me author Sally Hepworth. I gave the book a try because it had a intriguing storyline. But it was only an okay book for me not a top read. I'm glad I read it and will try other books by author.

Stephen Aston is getting remarried! The only problem is, he's still married to his first wife, even though she is in a care facility for dementia. But he'll take care of that easily, by divorcing her. Heather is the same age as Stephen's daughters and clearly she's a gold digger who is after their father's money. Heather has secrets that she's keeping close, and reasons of her own for wanting to marry Stephen.

if domestic family drama is your thing, then this is the book for you! The pacing was a slow build and the characters drove the story. There wasn't a lot of action, but it was always about planting seeds of doubt in the readers mind. Not quite a five star read as I felt the ending was slightly rushed and wrapped up too quickly.

The Younger Wife is the second book I’ve read by Sally Hepworth. I dove into this book expecting a fantastic read. Her book, The Good Sister, was a 5-star read for me, so she had some big shoes to fill. I enjoyed the multiple points of view and what seemed to be a long build-up to an explosive ending, but when the conclusion came, it felt rushed, ambiguous, and incomplete. And up until the very end, I honestly thought it would be a 4-5 star read for me. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite hit the mark. I thoroughly enjoy her writing style, so I’ll for sure give her next book another chance.

A husband. His daughters. His first wife. His new, younger wife. And a murder that ties them altogether.
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Stephen Aston is announcing his impending nuptials to a new woman: Heather. A new wife that’s younger than both of his daughters and an old wife who has dementia and is in a nursing home. The daughters: Tully and Rachel each have their own issues that their struggling with and finding out their dad is going to remarry before he’s even divorced their ill mother is another shock to their systems. But it turns out Heather and Stephen have secrets of their own. When everything comes to a head on their wedding day, who will be left alive?
👰‍♀️
Anything Sally Hepworth writes is an automatic read for me. If you haven’t read The Mother-in-Law I highly recommend it, as I still think about it to this day. This adult book had the same pacing and thriller components I’ve come to expect from Hepworth’s writing, as it keeps me turning the pages due to short chapters and multiple points of view. I highly recommend this title and author to anyone who is a fan of Liane Moriarty and suspense books in general. It is actually a great book to choose for a book club as the ending will spark a lot of conversation. Thank you @librofm for a copy of this novel.

CW: lost pregnancy, physical abuse, death, dementia, anxiety, kleptomania, sexual assault, binge eating

4 ⭐️ I wanted more from the ending, which seems to be the theme in the reviews.

A family full of secrets, or maybe not?

Stephen Aston and his two daughters, Tully and Rachel, have picture perfect lives -- or do they? Stephen's wife, Pam, gets dementia and is never the same again. Enter Heather, a young interior designer with a tragic backstory. Heather and Stephen fall in love, and plan on getting married (after her divorces his current wife, Pam, of course). However, things in the past and present don't add up for Heather -- or Rachel and Tully, especially after the discovery of almost $100,000 squirreled away by Pam in a hot water bottle. What was the money for? Does anything Pam says make sense? Will the bride and groom make it down the aisle? How will Tully and Rachel cope with their own personal lives?

Honestly, the ending of this one wasn't quite what I expected -- there was no "ah ha" moment. I did find myself going back to reread parts of the book to see if I missed something, but overall, I didn't find the ending as satisfying as previous novels by Sally Hepworth. Additionally, I wasn't particularly fond of any of the characters except Rachel. I found Stephen and Heather both hard to get a grasp on along with not relating to Tully at all. I was waiting for the author to draw a similar conclusion between Tully's kleptomania and her mother's "stealing things" but Hepworth never went there.

Overall, a solid read, but not quite with the twists and punchiness I had been expecting.

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth was a miss for me. I am disappointed because I liked her other books. The women in this book were stupid or crazy and the author didn’t wrap the story up in a satisfying way, which I’m not a fan of. I’m probably in the minority for this one though. I would read her again though!

Thanks to #Netgalley and the publisher for providing an ARC of #TheYoungerWife.

After reading my first Sally Hepworth novel, The Mother-In-Law, I have eagerly awaited each and every book from her. I was thrilled to get to read The Younger Wife. I gave The Younger Wife one less star than The Mother-In-Law and The Good Sister because both of those literally blew me away in one way or another and I couldn't stop talking about them to friends. The Younger Wife was really good, but I just didn't love it nearly as much as either of the other two, but I still really enjoyed it.

It feels weird to be defending a 4 star review, but because the book is still such a good family drama/thriller, I feel I need to explain why it isn't as good as Ms. Hepworth's previous two in my opinion.

1. There were no characters I really loved in it. All three of the main women in the book were well-written, Rachel was the only one of them I cared much about. This was slightly disappointing because writing characters I adored was the author's strong suit in the last two novels she published.

2. Regardless of the outcome of the story, I struggled to even open my mind to the possibility of loving the coupe getting married. I mean, an older man marrying a younger woman is not something I COULDN'T get behind, but the fact that he literally divorces his wife who has dimentia so that he CAN marry Heather made me really disgusted with both of them, though Ms.Hepworth does her best to make it more palatable.

3. There is a lot of women questioning their own sanity in the book. Granted, I am sure we all do question our own sanity sometimes, but when you read about the three women and their issues, its frustrating as a reader to see that theme feature so heavily. I do better with that when there is only one character in a book that is doing that, but with all the lead females doing that and one secondary character, at some point, it just feels like too much. Too depressing.

4. That brings me to the humor. In both the last two books, there were quirky characters that brought some levity to the heaviness of the story. In this one, none of the characters were funny and there was little lightness to balance all the shade.

So while all that sounds and feels overly critical, I would still recommend this one as a great book in Sally Hepworth's catalog. They can't all be 5-stars. I also wanted to add, I have seen lots of reviews slamming the whole book over the ending. I was dreading the ending the whole time I read the book because of those reviews. Frankly, I am baffled as to why that ending bugged some people so much. To me, it was a very satisfying ending.

I’d like to start off by saying, that if I had gone into this book blindly having never read anything by Hepworth, I believe I would have liked this book more than I did. Be that as it may, I have read several of her books and I cannot help but to compare this book to its predecessors. This build up in The Younger wife was so intense, but the climax wasn’t there. While reading her previous works, I audibly gasped when the mystery was solved and the ending was revealed. I found this ending to be lackluster and stale.

That being said, I truly believe if I wasn’t such a huge Hepworth fan with a predisposition to expect the greatness I have grown accustomed to from Hepworth, I would have loved this book.

Regardless, this will not knock her from my “auto-buy” list. I will still rush out on publication day to grab this book and the next and the next. Solid 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 on Goodreads and Netgalley!

Thank you to Netgally and St Martins Press for both the audiobook and ebook versions of this ARC so that I could review it immersive reading style! My absolute favorite way to read!

Confession: This was my first book by Sally Hepworth.

With that off my chest, I can honestly say that it definitely won’t be my last. It’s been a while since I have read a book so quickly. Once I began, I didn’t want to put it down. Real life was put on the back burner, chores waited to be finished, laundry sat in the hamper, supper waited to be cooked, I had reading to do!

This book is everything that I look for in a domestic thriller. I felt as though I were a voyeur, peeking in the characters’ windows, eavesdropping on their most private conversations. It was riveting, scandalous, and I couldn’t get enough.

The book is told from multiple characters’ perspectives. This was the perfect way to tell this story. I would read one chapter, then want to read another, and another. My interest was piqued. I wanted to get inside the heads of this prominent family. To the outside world, they appeared to have it all together, but behind closed doors, their lives were filled with dysfunction and so many secrets.

I don’t want to get into too many details about the story itself, you can get the gist from the synopsis. This is no ordinary novel about a younger woman marrying an older, successful man and his children being dismayed over it. Oh, no! This novel is so much more than that. As the story unfolded, my suspicions were on high alert, it kept me guessing, and kept me intrigued until the final page.

I am so happy to have finally read this author’s work. I am looking forward to reading more by her in the near future. The Younger Wife will definitely be making my list of favorite books of 2022.

*5 Stars

Oh man. Am I really supposed to have an opinion on this book? Because I am conflicted! ⁣
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⁣We have an older surgeon marrying his new, much younger girlfriend. Only problem? He must first divorce his current wife- who can no longer speak for herself. Gasp. ⁣
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⁣My points: ⁣
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⁣The Younger Wife grabbed my attention from the very first page. I needed to know what happened next. The characters in this book were pretty hard to like. You have this family that looks perfect from the outside but they are actually the biggest hot mess express. I just wanted to force them all into therapy. ⁣
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⁣Worst of all? The end. ⁣
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⁣Be sure to check the long list or triggers on this one. It might be hard for a whole bunch of people. ⁣
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⁣Funny enough, I gave this one four stars right after I finished it. I guess I’m mostly conflicted upon reflection. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⁣
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⁣Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for an ARC of The Younger Wife. It publishes on April 5, 2022.

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

A big thanks to @netgalley and @stmartinspress for the ARC. This one is out April 5!

This one is exactly what I would expect from a Hepworth novel - drama, family dynamics, and some great twists and turns.

What made this book so successful for me was the different POVs. Each voice had their own issues and no voice was reliable. As the reader, you never knew what or who to trust. I found the character arcs to be quite satisfying, and each ended in a place that made sense.

I struggled with the pace a bit until the last fourth of the book. However, the pace quickened at the end, and the build up and release was just what I wanted. I also struggled with all that was happening. There was a ton going on with each character. At times, it felt like there were too many things.

All in all, this was an entertaining read that left me feeling satisfied!

Is the danger in your home or are you inventing the danger and that is the problem? This is a question that each woman in this book must confront.

Welcome to the lives of the Astor Family. Stephen Astor is about to marry a woman almost three decades younger then himself. Heather is assumed to be a gold digger and will not offer anything of much substance.

There are Stephen’s two daughters, Rachel and Tully. Each is coming to terms with this major change in their beloved father’s life. Rachel lives a quiet life and does not have relationships with men. Tully, is married to Sonny and they have two young boys. Tully has always had anxiety and has a hard time handling change. The sisters at the start are not very close. Their Mother Pam has Alzheimer’s disease. Stephen has decided to divorce Pam so that he can marry Heather. It’s a lot to take in and accept.

I really loved this book. Sally Hepworth is a master at telling family drama. The best part of the book to me is Heather, Rachel, and Tully each has issues and problems, but it does not devolve into a sad destruction of each other. Each woman is afraid of what is occurring in her life and uncertain of how to confront that reality. The strength to me is that the women grow stronger, smarter, and more caring towards each other. I loved that Heather is not perfect, has many secrets, yet really cares about Rachel and Tully. She is also kind toward Pam. She shines through as a real person that wants a family, but knows she must work to become part of this one. Rachel and Tully also start revealing their secrets. We get to know them, warts and all. They start to lean on each other more. They begin to accept Rachel as she really is.

So, someone can try to damage you and hurt you, but if you have support, you can survive this. I loved this message. The one thing I want to make clear though is I do not think this is a mystery or a thriller. It is well written fiction about the lives of complex women. If you like an intriguing novel about women with twists and turns that show things are not as they seem, I highly recommend this book. It certainly worked for me.

Thank you NetGalley, Sally Hepworth, and St. Martin’s Press for an ARC of this book. As always, I really appreciate this.

The Younger Wife is an intriguing, twisty novel about a family full of secrets that will have you second guessing who to believe to be telling the truth the further into the story you get. This highly entertaining novel was a page-turner that was hard to put down, although I found the end to be a little frustrating and open-ended for my taste. However, Sally's writing style had me so swept up in the story, that I read 80% in one sitting and found myself thinking about it till I finished the next day. As a usual romance reader, I enjoyed the side stories of Rachel/Darcy and Tully/Sonny, which I felt helped humanize them in the face of some otherwise questionable actions. I still am not sure which of the wives to believe and would've loved more backstory from each of them. I would definitely recommend this novel to fans of suspenseful, domestic thrillers who don't mind an ambiguous ending. I am between 3.5 and 4 stars on this one, as I really enjoyed it till the end and am definitely interested in reading more of Sally's books (this was the first of hers I've read). Thank you so much to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion and review.

Another fantastic read by Hepworth. Stephen is a heart surgeon with two daughters and many friends and colleagues who love him. What they don’t realize is Stephen may have a dark side that most people don’t know about, except his ex-wife who is suffering from dementia. As Stephen nears his wedding day, with a much younger woman his secrets are coming out. Excellent, fast paced thriller that is impossible to put down.

The Younger Wife is a thriller focusing on Heather Wisher, a young woman who is marrying a man ~30 years her senior. Before she can marry Stephen, he must divorce his wife, Pamela, who is suffering from dementia. Also involved in the story are Stephen's adult daughters, Rachel and Tully, who have pretty mixed feelings about Heather. The book starts with an accident on the wedding day and then reflects back to the year leading up the wedding as the reader tries to piece together what happened and how things got there.

I don't know if this is necessary on netgalley reviews, but in case it is, as I know you can look at other people's review, there will be spoilers beyond this point.

Unfortunately, I found this book to be problematic. The male characters in this book were perfect and well established men while all the women were "neurotic" and "crazy". The women all had tragic backstories with various traumas (rape, anxiety, domestic abuse, alcoholism) that felt more like plot devices than truly fleshed out characters. I think it's fine for these traumas to be in books, but they have to be handled sensitively and should be well rounded. For instance, the character who was raped, after 20 years of not dating and avoiding any and all types of physical and emotional intimacy, falls for a guy who is hot and charms her with horrible jokes. It felt unrealistic and like it overlooked the multitude of that trauma.

Tied in with that, the female characters, with all these traumas, felt quite cliched. They didn't feel unique or really bring emotion or insight to their experiences. They were thriller stereotypes.

The ending of this book was the worst part. It brought it down an extra star for me. We are in 2022. Why are we still writing thrillers with the trope of "crazy women" whose trauma makes them unreliable. A) It's overdone. B) After the #metoo movement and the push to believe women, this book is an undermining of that message. Maybe if it was 1 woman (though that feels just as gross) but every woman in this book became an unreliable narrator due to her past trauma. It's giving off this message that women who have experienced trauma cannot distinguish between reality and their prior traumas.

The whodunnit reveal felt unjustified. Rachel did it because she suspected her dad abused her mother. That is such a drastic action to take against someone that she loves and had an idyllic childhood with. It's not even that he abused RACHEL, just that he might have done it to her mother.

One final thought, I went into this expecting it to be a thriller but I would say it's more a family drama. It was a quick read, but there wasn't much I found thrilling.

Unfortunately, I did not like this book and due to the problematic message of harmful stereotypes that it perpetuates, I couldn't recommend this.

I have enjoyed all of Sally’s books that I have read before. I was really looking forward to this one but it kind of missed the mark for me.
I enjoyed the three different narrators but wish I could have gotten a little more of each of them. I felt like there were big holes. Why were there so many secrets within the family? What happened to the things Tully was remembering? I liked how Rachel and Tully’s relationship seemed to heal and they come together as friends and not just sisters as the book goes along.
I also did not care for the ending.
Thank you Netgalley for the ARC.

“The Younger Wife” by Sally Hepworth
⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Release Date: 4/5/22
Genre: thriller

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC! Honestly I enjoyed the individual stories and it was interesting how each character dealt with their past. For the most part most of the characters were likeable. The main issue is the ending wasn’t 100% clear. It left you to a lot of assumptions and no answers. I don’t mind coming up with my own answers, but I thought it was too big of a hole.

Stephen is a heart surgeon and very beloved in his community. His current wife Pam has dementia and is getting worse. He hired an interior decorator to remodel the home of Pam’s dreams as one last gift. He didn’t expect to fall in love with Heather. At first their relationship was all business, but as Pam declined he found himself confiding in her. The main issue is she is as young as his two daughters in their 30s. He doesn’t seem to mind.
The daughters Rachel and Tully share their journey of meeting the new girlfriend, but we also see their trials and tribulations in their every day life.
We see glimpses of the Wedding day throughout the book and something goes terribly wrong. What are the events that lead up to this tragedy?

This book is not really a thriller, so if you go in expecting that, you will be a bit disappointed as I was. It’s more of a piece of fiction with a mystery element thrown in. I read this quickly as it was an easy, interesting read, but there was a lot going on with these characters that really didn’t seem to fit with a supposed mystery-thriller book like this one. It had the setup that I typically love-a big event at the beginning where the reader tries to figure out The Who and The Why, but in this case, the answers to these questions just left more to be desired. This is a decent book, but not my favorite by this author. 3 stars ⭐️. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the advanced copy for review.

After seeing many of my friends reading this one and giving it a one star I am going to pass on this one right now. I was really looking forward to it but with so many people loving it until the end, I am going to wait and see what she publishes next.