I really struggled with this. The concept was so far fetched that I found myself getting irritated in a pile of outstanding books this year so far - it was average.
Well written. But just couldn’t get invested

This book was just an okay read. Although there were a few twists in it the story overall was quite predictable and did not keep me interested.

Description sounded good but I'm afraid I didn't enjoy the book as much as I hoped. Sorry this one wasn't for me.
Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity the read the ARCC

This book totally stretched my imagination. At first I thought the author was being far too unrealistic in the plot. I then came to think well it certainly could have happened. Once I reached that frame of mind I was more able to relax and simply enjoy the creativity of the author.

I must also say that after reading hundreds of books in this particular genre that I normally can predict the outcome. This certainly was not the case here!

I struggled with this book, It was really slow and I found it hard to follow and stay interested. I didn’t love the plot or characters. I kept reading it hoping I would become more interested but gave up half way through.
Thank you to Bookouture, & Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I had really had high hopes hopes for the second wives and I wasn’t disappointed. There was a lot in the beginning but once I got my caring I really enjoyed the story. From the marriage swap to the mystery and scandal.

Brigid and Charity are friends who each get divorced, then promptly marry each other's ex husband. Whoa. Talk about complicated. But they make it work for the sake of the friend group. Then when Brigid has an accident and suffers from some amnesia and has dreams/flashbacks of a disturbing event, she doesn't know what to believe. The reader also feels on unsure footing and has to try to figure out what is going on and who to trust. I enjoyed this twisty ride.

So this was an ARC read for me from NetGalley and I’m always grateful to read new books that haven’t been released yet but this one missed the mark for me.

I went in reading with very high hopes because there was scandal, mystery, betrayal — all the juicy things that combined can make a powerful story.

From the beginning I just felt confused and quickly saw that there was just a lot going on constantly. The ending was just something I skimmed through and that was that.

I did find the marriage swap interesting and the emotional dysphasia that one of the characters suffered from.

This could be an amazing book and could easily just be that right now it wasn’t the best book for me to read! Please always read because you want to read not based off reviews only!!!

I did not read Second Wives through an educator lens.

Second Wives by Carey Baldwin seemed right up my alley. However, the first chapter was hard to connect with. The story picked up with the Supper Club meeting and then ebbed and flowed throughout the book in terms of keeping my attention and interest. The plot was there, but the character development and consistency was lacking. The ending was one that made me roll my eyes.

This book blew me away -- it was so different from what I expected, and so amazing! Kept me glued to my seat and guessing.. No spoilers, but I loved the ending :)

Wonderful. Loved this one so much. Thrilling and suspenseful. A fast paced, heart pounding read packed with twists.

This one has a unique premise. Two friends end up, through a series of events that unfold during the book, switching husbands. While I am not married, this seems unlikely to happen. Especially when they stay in the same circle of friends. But this is the start of the book. After Brigid is accidentally shot at a dinner party, she is not the same and having weird dreams about witnessing someone being drowned. I’ll admit that I did not like the characters much but I needed to know what happened. Who was trustworthy and if someone was after Brigid. And I definitely needed to know if her “friend” Charity was gaslighting her or if there was something bigger happening.

In such a short book, the author also deals with money issues, mental health of Brigid and family issues. All while developing some pretty complex characters and keeping me in the dark about who was up to what. I liked the chatty writing style of the author. And I’ve never seen this before, but some of the chapters end on cliffhangers that aren’t immediately resolved at the next chapter. In the past I’ve seen the author go to a new character to keep the reader guessing, but in this book, it just jumped a little ahead in time and then took its time resolving the cliffhanger. That really kept me on my toes.

The easy to read writing style and the ultimate mystery kept me engaged and seems on par with what I’d call the popcorn thriller genre.

Brigid came round in a hospital bed, her husband holding her hand. She is confused & struggles to remember what happened- she is even more confused when she is told that in fact it is her ex-husband beside her. It seems she has had a serious accident. Nash- the man beside her is married to Charity & she is married to Jackson; Charity's ex. It is a strange situation but as they were part of the same friends circle it was good to keep it civil. But Brigid struggles. The accident has left her struggling to recapture her relationship with Jackson & haunted by a nightmare of someone being drowned. Charity seems to be wherever she turns. Her relationship with her daughter, Tish, is not good- especially when Charity's ne'er do well brother persuades Tish to leave college to be with him. Will Brigid ever get her life back?

This was a twisty tale with some really nasty characters as well as some you weren't sure of! Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book.

I was so intrigued by this one, but it wasn't really what I was expecting. It took a long, long time to get anywhere near a "thriller", and by then, my interest was mostly gone. I found myself thinking of this book as a chore towards the end, and was pretty much scanning paragraphs at that point. 2.5 stars rounded up.

Brigid and Nash’s marriage is in trouble since she feels like he’s cheating on her. She doesn’t want a divorce because their daughter will be going to college but after marriage counseling has failed, they eventually part ways.

Nash marries Charity, the woman Brigid suspected of cheating, and Brigid marries Charity’s ex husband.

Charity wants to be Brigid’s friend but she’s also jealous of her life and the relationship she still has with Nash. Charity’s daughter was killed and Brigid’s daughter survived so Charity goes the extra mile to make Brigid jealous of her relationship with her. Confused yet?

Brigid is involved in a terrible accident while attending a party with her friends. She’s diagnosed with acute amnesia which brings on terrible, lifelike nightmares that she’s compelled to investigate.

When Brigid’s friend notices that someone is out to destroy him, he assumes that it’s someone inside their friendship circle. Brigid must figure out who it is before it’s too late. ⏰

This was a great fast paced thriller that I flew through! Each friend within the circle has their own bit of drama which kept me glued to the pages. The final twist was surprising and I never saw it coming but now that I think back into the story, it makes perfect sense.

I would’ve given this book 5 stars but there were so many characters to keep track of and I found myself flipping backwards to refresh my memory before continuing on.

Twisting psychological threads.
Second Wives by Carey Baldwin is told in the first-person POV of mainly Brigid who is married to Jackson, and some of Charity’s POV who is married to Nash, and was not only Brigid’s bestie but is Jackson’s ex. Then, a third voice comes in; that of the antagonist in short chapters towards the end.

The blurb says it all. Brigid has been in a terrible accident when she almost lost her life. She is also battling with her feelings for her recent ex, Nash. Brigid’s erstwhile best friend, Charity, had an affair with Nash then stole him from her. To top it all, the accident leads Brigid back to her shrink, to whom she divulges a recurring nightmare. That of the blurb. A woman is being held under water by a man, who then chases after Brigid.

Carey Baldwin gives us a large cast of characters, the couples who have formed the Supper Club, with their regular shindigs and shenanigans. There’s also Brigid’s teenage daughter, Tish, and Charity’s brother, Christian. There is a dead teen in the recent past to add a bit of pathos. Tish has an issue with Brigid, who is tacitly fighting for her good name, despite various parties having falsely painted her to be the marriage-breaker. But Brigid, the self-professed peace-maker, is too virtuous to correct people’s misapprehensions. The book reiterated that Brigid and Charity and Brigid had been friends, but the novel showed otherwise, as threads of jealousy and one-upmanship rang throughout.

There are plenty of twisty threads, which made for a pleasurable read. Carey Baldwin creates a number of red herrings amongst this large ensemble. There are yachting trips, Lake Tahoe and an island, castles, museum trips, a retrospective rock performance by Jackson that harks back to his long-gone career. There’s money, jealousy, attempted drownings, cradle-snatchers and even guns going off. The novel juxtaposed several slower episodes disparate from the mystery thread, which disrupted plot continuity. Episodes including relationship-building between Brigid and Tish, Brigid and Jackson, Brigid and Charity. The characters were believable and engaging, with most having shades of grey – except of course, Brigid, who rang as too good to be true.

This is like an inverted romance, which could have been romantic if Brigid had feelings for Jackson after her accident wiped some of her memories. After all, Jackson sounds like a hottie, similar to David Cassidy of the Partridge Family back in the day. Since Brigid had a crush on the rock star-cum-actor, Jackson, when he was a teenager, and in her high school, back in her day, it makes sense that she should drool over her own husband. But she doesn’t even desire him.

Second Wives is my first novel by Carey Baldwin. The author’s writing is easy to read, page-turning, with plenty of surprises. Despite some implausibility of plot, Second Wives is a worthwhile psychological thriller. The mystery was intriguing and the events page-turning; the ending really interesting. I will definitely read more novels by Carey Baldwin. #SecondWives #NetGalley.

This review also appears in Amazon.com, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5450141254 and https://thereadersvault.blogspot.com/2023/03/second-wives-by-carey-baldwin-4.html.

A Supper Club, two couples that swapped partners, each couple has a daughter that were best friends until one of them tragically died, and a dark dream. Or is it a dream?

Brigid suffers a serious injury at one of the Supper Club parties and ends up in hospital. When she wakes, she is unsure of which man is her husband and why she doesn't feel any feelings towards her new husband. Her therapist advises she is suffering from emotional amnesia and sets her the task to try and bring back her emotions. Her husband supports her in this and they take a trip to Lake Tahoe where the mystery around her dream starts to unravel...

Second Wives is the first book I have read by Carey Baldwin and I have to say I really enjoyed. Baldwin has such an effortless and easy-to-read writing style that makes it impossible to put the book down. The twists in the book really had me gripped - was it a dream? Which man was it? Is Charity behind it? These questions kept me constantly turning the pages with a need to know more! I really loved Brigid and felt so sorry for her throughout this book, but the ending had me cheering.

Thank you NetGalley, Bookouture and Carey Baldwin for letting me read this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for this ARC.

This book was definitely unlike anything I've ever read, I'll definitely give it that. The events that led to the main character's accident and recovery afterwards was a new and refreshing idea that I hadn't read before, yet there were many points that I felt like I didn't want to finish the book, although personally I'm never one to leave a book unfinished, so I pushed through it, hoping it would get better as it progressed.

The synopsis sounded good at the beginning and led me to believe that this was something actually worth reading. While the description says that this is a psychological thriller and "would leave you speechless", I often found myself bored throughout and questioned "what is even going on?" Also, it mentioned that this book is perfect for Freida McFadden's (and other similar authors) fans, but honestly they don't even compare! I am a big fan of Freida McFadden and this writing style is not even remotely similar or interesting. I guess I was just expecting more out of this book than what I actually got. The whole thing lacked in the psychological thriller genre department, in my opinion.

Most chapters listed a specific location relevant to California that I didn't really understand, which leads me to wonder if it was even necessary to mention. There was a lot of bickering, drama and gossip which definitely held my interest, but at the same time it felt like the book was filled with random events that were used to just fill up space in the story line. Totally unnecessary. Many of the characters were unrelatable and easy to dislike, or just small with little roles and very unforgettable. The friend groups daily shenanigans seemed a little far fetched and highly unlikely to happen in the real world.

Second Wives was an easy to read highly engaging story. The plot entails two friendly couples getting a divorce and then getting together with the opposite partner. Having known people that have done that successfully made that realistic in my mind. Carey Baldwin created characters that mimicked the emotions that seem in keeping with people going through similar circumstances - jealousy, suspicion, frustration among them. Baldwin’s writing style seemed to make the characters so realistic I felt as though I was right in the room watching them interact. The addition of emotional amnesia was fascinating to me and Baldwin included it in such an original way helping the reader really understand such an abstract concept.
I loved the addition of the “mystery voice” sharing their own part of the story. It kept me reviewing the characters in my mind, potentially eliminating some and casting suspicion on others. The twists towards the end were the icing on the cake. I am eagerly awaiting Carey Baldwin’s next book.
Many many thanks to Carey Baldwin, Bookouture, and NetGalley for affording me the pleasure of reading an arc of this recently published book. Three and a half stars!

Thanks to Netgalley for letting me review this book. It took me almost five days to finish it, and it was only 300 pages. This book just didn't grab me. I thought it was written in a very young-adult way, and I don't think this thriller was marketed as a YA book. I also found the main character to be annoying. Unfortunately, this book just wasn't my cup of tea.