I received this as an advanced reader copy from NetGalley

A woman is missing, and presumed dead. As usual the first suspect would be the husband, but in this situation the woman had two husbands. Did either one of them murder her?

DCI Clements who is investigating the case knows that many different things could have happened and that they won't get any closer till a body is found..

Stacie Jones with her father who has been nursing her back to health. She is recovering from an illness and is reclusive and shielded from the news of what is going on around her. Soon realization will hit and wow!!!.

How is all of this connected together? Who is Stacie really? Is she the missing woman?

The story is captivating and pulls you in. Enjoyed it!!

OMG, hold on b/c this one is a wild ride! The bad guys are the worst and then they sort of redeem themselves and the good guys are good but then totally lose that goodness in the end. Fortunately, there was some happiness at the end, which saved it for me! This was my 1st book by Adele Parks but most def will not be my last!

#TwoDeadWives
#NetGalley

This just wasn't the book for me at the moment. I found it to start incredibly slow and I didn't feel connected to the characters. It would have been nice to know before requesting this one that there is a book that comes before this. I found myself slightly confused at the characters' relationships.

Two Dead Wives, Adele Parks' latest thriller, is filled with suspense, unexpected twists, and an emotional rollercoaster. This page-turner is a sequel to Woman Last Seen, but don't worry if you haven't read the first book; you'll be able to dive headfirst into this riveting mystery. Two Dead Wives grabs your attention from the very first page and refuses to go. Parks will keep you guessing the entire time, and just when you think you've worked it out, she will toss you another unexpected curveball.

Adele Parks has created an addictive and compelling story that makes it impossible to put down. She develops intriguing characters with whom readers can connect on a variety of levels. It's a credit to Parks' talent that, despite the awful things that the main character has done to the people she cares about, she is able to generate sympathy for her.

Two Dead Wives is a must-read for everyone who enjoys a good thriller that keeps them guessing. This novel is a fascinating story, whether you're a fan of Adele Parks' past work or a newcomer like me. I highly recommend it, and I'm excited to see what Adele Parks has in store for her readers next!

Kylie Gillingham has gone missing and her secret has been exposed. Kylie is married to two different husbands. To one husband she is a trophy wife and to the other she is a devoted stepmother. Then there is Stacie Jones. Stacie has no memory at all. It has been wiped out from surgery. But soon her reclusive life will be destroyed.

This story is a bit slow in places, especially towards the end. So in other words, it seems too long and a bit predictable. I did enjoy the characters. But it can be a bit confusing in places in that it is told from different perspectives.

I have not read the first book in this series. I might have liked this one more if I had.

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.

Two Dead Wives was overall a good book but I found that having that many perspectives became confusing and I wasn’t fully invested in the book. I do think it’s got a good story and some parts were very thriller ish. Overall, it was a good book. I wouldn’t read it again and I would recommend to some of my friends but overall it missed some marks for me.

It's always interesting to see how different readers perceive a book. While Two Dead Wives may not have been the perfect fit for me but it's good to note that there are elements of the book that could still appeal to others. With a solid plot and thrilling moments, this book could be a great read for those who enjoy multiple perspectives and a well-crafted thriller. It's also worth mentioning that receiving an ARC (Advance Reader's Copy) from the publisher is always a great opportunity to discover new books. Happy reading!

I did not read the first book, Woman Last Seen, and am totally lost. I can't read this until and if I read the first one, I wish it would have said it was a sequel.

Thank you NetGalley for this arc,

⭐️⭐️⭐️
Two Dead Wives
Author: Adele Parks
Source: NetGalley
Pub Date: Dec. 26, 2023

Two Dead Wives has a great premise in that it’s not two different wives. It is one wife married to two men, a bigamist, and when you are cheating on two guys who live near each other, one with kids, things are going to get messy…like you may be DOA. I thought the writing was unusual, to begin with, and then I found out that this is a sequel to a previous novel by the same author that tells WHO DID THE DEED so it was a short trip down memory lane. That’s a bit of a shocker, and I wish I had known the FULL backstory and not the reader’s digest condensed start to this novel. After getting a bearing on the story, we suddenly meet a new character who seemingly has no connection to this missing bigamist. After getting to the end, the connection between the two stories becomes more apparent. Still, I did not care for the COVID storyline, multiple amnesias, not many characters to cheer for in this book, and a rushed ending. #TwoDeadWives @NetGalley #mystery #thriller #suspense #fiction #GreatBritain #London  #MIRA #whodunit #COVID
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I received a complimentary copy of this ARC. The opinions expressed in this review are entirely my own. Thank you to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this novel. Pub. Date: Dec. 26, 2023.
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#book #books #bookAddict #BooksOfInstagram #bookstagram #bookstagramer #bookshelf #reader #booklove #bookreader #reader #reviewer #DecemberReads

I have read a handful of Adele Parks books and she always writes the best twists. Well, I’m here to tell you that she did it again. This book was so twisty and filled with revelation after revelation that I read 85% of it in one day, in one sitting. I literally did not move.

The story follows one woman who has gone missing who just happened to be married to two men. Right off the bat you are knee deep in the investigation of this missing woman, but all the questions about her circumstances are spinning around you making your head spin. I love how Parks actually reveals part of the “who dun it?” early on, but makes it quite an adventure to get to the gritty details of everything. And honestly, I was not convinced the information I “knew” was fact. I second guessed everything until the very end.

My one issue with this novel was the jumping around. I love a good puzzle, but a few times I found myself extremely confused about who I was reading or how they were even involved in the story. I know that was part of it, but you jump from person to person, and also to different times in the timeline. Occasionally this got a bit too much and I had to pause to wrap my brain around what was happening. This is not enough to deter me from loving this book, but it was noticeable.

Other than that, I really enjoyed the character development in this book, especially with the kids involved. A lot of times, unless the kids are the actual victims, writers skirt around involving the children because it can be a turnoff to some readers. Parks wrote the kids into the story intricately and thoroughly and I loved seeing what was happening from their eyes. Parks hit all the personalities, even with the age differences in characters, so perfectly and I really think it made this story even better. This is a beautifully written maze that brings you out just as you think you will drown in all your questions and theories.

Then she throws at me in the afternotes a secret that has me RUNNING to the bookstore. I don’t want to spoil it so… you’ll have to read the entire book and then get to that secret. Happy reading!

Kylie Gillingham a bigamist is presumed dead but there is no body. DCI Clements and her partner are working the investigation, and this is all happening during the 2020 pandemic. There were 2 husbands with one of the husbands Kylie was a stepmother to his 2 children.

The investigation finds where Kylie was kept in a room in an apartment just floors below where she lived with one of her husband's Daan Janssen, she had kicked or punched a hole big enough for debris to fall into the streets but still no body.

There is also a women released from the hospital with a brain tumor in which her father is now taking care of her. How are these people connected?

Such secrets weave a web that will eventually come to light.

This is a series but also a standalone read. Very enjoyable story line I would recommend to for anyone that loves a police mystery.

Thank you NetGalley for the advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest review.

I absolutely loved Two Dead Wives. I didn’t know it was a sequel to Woman Last Seen until the very last page. (This was a NetGalley offering, it sounded good, I requested it, and my request was accepted.) The story became very complex – no spilling the beans from me, though. The author did an expert job of keeping this very complicated plot clear and yet complete with twists. The characters were believable complete with human flaws, the story kept a comfortable pace throughout, and the ending was very satisfying. I did wonder halfway through how the author would ever be able to pull it all together. She did.
Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review Two Dead Wives. It was brilliant. Well done, Ms. Parks. Well done.

It was when Kylie Gillingham, 43, a.k.a. Kai Janssen, went missing that it was discovered that she was a bigamist. One husband, Dean Janssen, has left the country and was charged with her murder. Her other husband, Mark Fletcher, is stunned as he cares for their two sons. A friend, Fiona, has come to help with the boys as Mark processes his shock.

Stacie Jones has had to return to England from Paris to stay with her father after she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. After radical surgery and chemo, she is on the road to recovery. However, her memory before the surgery is lost to her. Before she left England, she had been engaged to a nice man but decided that she wanted more from life than being married to a farmer. So, in Paris, she became an England language teacher at a boy’s school. Her mother had left her and her father when she was just a little girl. It’s just her and her father now as she struggles to regain her memory.

Although I read “Woman Last Seen” I still struggled to try and figure things out in this book. The characters did not draw me in and the repetitive dialogue was so unnecessary. Although I was tempted to DNF this book a time or two, I persevered to the end. There’s a lot of action, pain, lies and just plain evil. I’m sure many readers will enjoy this book.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

This is a sequel to Woman Last Seen. Having read both, it is interesting to find out what happened. Twisty, dense and very readable!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Mira for this ARC!

Ever finish a book and wonder what the heck you just read? I had such a response upon completing Two Dead Wives – which is the follow-up to the author’s other recent release, Woman Last Seen. When I selected this book for review, I had no idea that was the case – neither author nor publisher bills this book as a ‘sequel’ – because of that, this review contains spoilers for the first volume in the series.

DCI Clements is keeping an open (the unkind might call it ‘empty’) mind when it comes to the case of missing bigamist Kylie Gillingham aka Leigh Fletcher/Kai Janssen. When the apartment where Kylie had been held prisoner was discovered, it became clear the woman had not just absconded from her dual lives but had been forcibly taken and abused. Evidence suggests the person responsible was someone close to the case since Kylie was moved only hours before the police found the hideyhole she was held in. Conventional wisdom says it must have been one of the husbands who murdered her. Many would add that the woman had it coming, given the pain and embarrassment Kylie had put both men through, and Clements’ partner/subordinate, Constable Tanner, is certainly convinced of that. Initially, Tanner had been focused on Mark Fletcher, husband number one, the suburban father of two sons whom Kylie, in her guise as Leigh, had helped raise, but Tanner now suspects the second, Daan Janssen. Kylie met and married the wealthy Janssen a few years into her marriage with Mark, identifying herself as Kai to the rich, generous foreigner. Daan, with his not-so-discreet hookups, supercilious demeanor, and thoroughly unhelpful attitude, makes for a very likely suspect. And the evidence – the proximity of where Kylie was held to his home, a receipt in his apartment, and items with his fingerprints on found in her prison – certainly seem to indicate he’s their man. However, Daan went home to his rich Dutch family at the start of the investigation, which was also at the beginning of the pandemic. He is under house arrest in the Netherlands and can’t return to England due to the restrictions on air travel. Clements isn’t thrilled with the situation, but she is savvy enough to know that everything could be coincidental, and none of it, in her mind, is a certain predictor of guilt. Since no body has been found, she continues to search for the absent Kylie/Leigh/Kai, hopeful that there will be a happy ending to the whole sordid mess.

After finding out all this, we make a PoV switch to a young woman who seemingly has nothing to do with the case. Stacie is so lucky. A brain cancer survivor, she could easily be weathering the pandemic in some shabby apartment, unsure how to take care of herself. Instead, she is living with her retired physician father in a seaside cottage. While the greater world, with its COVID concerns, is especially scary to someone with a compromised immune system, the fresh sea air that enters their windows night and day and their isolated slice of the beach are proving to be very healing for her. She just wishes she could remember something, anything about her life prior to the moment she woke in this unfamiliar house to find a stranger calling himself her father.

I can’t tell you much about the convoluted plot of this story beyond the above because it’s all meant to be a mystery till near the end. The previous book ended with us knowing just what happened to Kylie and why, while the perpetrator stepped neatly into one of the lives she had left behind. Clements, however, is not privy to the information the reader has, and is still actively searching for the missing woman several months down the road. We find this out at the start of the story, and I could only wonder how this was possible given the usual restrictions of budgets and man-hours that limit the police. Plus, the evidence against Daan is pretty damning and wouldn’t seem to merit further investigation.

Woman Last Seen had stretched my suspension of disbelief almost to the breaking point, and Two Dead Wives pushed me way past that. A lot of the police work is too convenient to be realistic, and there are twists at the end that are ludicrous.

The only two truly likable characters in the narrative are Kylie’s stepsons, Ollie and Seb. Ollie had been difficult with his stepmother prior to her disappearance, refusing to call her mom anymore and referring to her instead as Leigh (the name she went by in that life), and he now carries the guilt of wondering if his teen angst drove her to bigamy. In typical teen fashion, he acts even more surly to express his remorse and anxiety. Seb refuses to accept his stepmother is dead and believes she will come home to him, which is stressful for Mark and Fiona, the family friend who has moved in with them to help them through both the stress of the pandemic and Kylie/Leigh’s loss. The boys are a treasure who deserve better than the adults they’ve been given.

The most difficult part of this story is the author trying to redeem the irredeemable. The implication is that Kylie did what she did because, as a step-parent, she had no legal standing with the kids. She no longer loved Mark but wanted desperately to keep the boys in her life, so she half-assed it by spending part of the week with them and part of the week with the man she loved, Daan. However, we learn that Mark would have been very happy to share custody if that was what the kids wanted. I also couldn’t accept the reasoning offered. It was made clear Kylie was the main caregiver, but that seemed unlikely given her absences. Mark would have had to share the responsibilities – this isn’t a case of weekend parenting like in a divorce when the dad can get away with putting the onus on primary custody mom. Mark would have had to make sure the kids were fed, clothed and in school for half the week at the very least. So he couldn’t have been as irresponsible and laid back as the author tries to imply.

At another point, one of our suspects places the boys in extreme danger and then is made to seem caring when he risks himself to save them. What??? They were fine until he shoved them into harm’s way, so no, that didn’t work for me either.

Two Dead Wives is a train wreck of a book. You will want to look; you almost won’t be able to help yourself as the author’s excellent prose sucks you in and makes you wonder how it will all end. But when you’re finished you will be slightly embarrassed to have been gawking at such a tragedy and realize the time you lost to it wasn’t well spent. If you read book one and want more closure, by all means, pick this up. I would advise others to give both of them a miss.

I have mixed feelings about this one. I enjoyed the story overall, and I don't mind when an author goes in crazy directions. However, I thought this was a little TOO crazy. It became absolutely unbelievable that all of this would happen. This an enjoyable read, but you definitely have to suspend your disbelief.

I did not know this was a sequel, but it read really well as a standalone.

Adele Parks can write a story. Bigamy is at the heart of this book and the consequences that follow. I didn't realize that this was a sequel to WOMAN LAST SEEN until I was three chapters in, but pleasantly surprised. Although you don't need to read these in order, the first one gives the background history of Leigh/Kylie or THE TWO DEAD WIVES.
Dc Clements investigation keeps the story moving forward, all the while we are learning more about the two families who were affected by the missing woman. I really liked how the author dug deeper with these characters.
The many POV's were important insight we didn't get in the first book. For example, how the husbands, Dan and Mark, viewed the betrayal. Or how Marks two kids felt so differently towards Leigh. The Introduction of Stacie was a clever twist I didn't anticipate. Although in the middle the story seemed to drag a little, you need to stick with this story until the end. I appreciate the closure the author gave us readers in regard to Leigh. I recommend this book to anyone who likes a little mystery with a twist of a woman who commits bigamy instead of a man.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harlequin Trade Publishing for this arc.

A woman missing, presumed deadg and her
two husbands are under the radaro
Staci Jones lives a quiet life in a Small
cottage by the ocean with her father as
she recovers from brain Sur ger y.
How are these two families connected?
The twists, the turns, It's not what you
think...


I didn't realize that there was a prequel
So I didn't know if I was missing out on any
information or not So I read this one as
a stand-alone psychological thriller. I did
really enjoy this one as It was beautifully
written with the perfect amount of
Suspense and building storyline, It kept me
on my toes! It had me trying to figure out
what the twist was the whole way through:
I definitely put the woman last seen on my
TBR. Thanks to @netgalley and Harlequin
trade publishing, Mira for the ARC.

Before reading this I wasn’t aware it was a sequel. However, I felt that this story was still complete on its own and if I missed anything from the first book it didn’t have significant impact on my understanding of the characters and plot of this sequel. That being said, I thought this book was a good read. You’re told pretty early on who did it and throughout the first two thirds you’re able to gather what happened. All is revealed in the final act after many POVs. All of which come complete with their own flashbacks and theories of what happened. It gets repetitive after a while so I had to read in chunks to keep it engaging. Still a good book and a good read if you’re looking, not for a murder mystery, but a mystery all the same.

Thank you to Net Galley for early access to this book before its release.

I was torn when giving this book a rating. Possibly if I had read the first book I would have gone for 4 stars instead of 3. The book ramped up in activity midway but I found it slow at points. That being said parts were bone chilling on some of the psychological mindsets of some of the characters and I applaud the author for that. Thank you Harlequin and NetGalley for this ARC!

DNF. Wasn’t really a fan of this and couldn’t get into the writing style no matter how hard I tried. Also wasn’t aware of it being a sequel - I don’t think it super affected my view but I wish these were more clearly labeled as such.