Boy, this book introduced me to a whole 'nother world, a world I have absolutely no experience with. I commend the author for her honesty, her unflinching look at herself, her husband and her marriage, and her sober observations of "The Wives." I slowly grew into this, much like the author did, appreciating the insight and raw emotion that was felt every day. I honestly cannot picture living like this, pretty much on edge for months at a time, unable to get answers or even ask questions. The relationships forged during the family's time in Georgia were honest, realistic, and felt true-to-life.

I finished the book with a new-found respect for our military families, and feel that a long untold story of the glue that holds families together was finally told.

I received a complimentary copy of the book from the publisher and NetGalley, and my review is being left freely.

I really liked this memoir about being a military wife.
Simone is an editor living in NYC but her boyfriend feels called to join the military. They end up moving to Columbus GA where Simone eventually makes friends with the other wives out of desperation.
Of course, they end up sustaining each other.
The book touches on mental health, dv, and alcoholism, but I wish it had said more. The book described scenes but never came back to reflect on them later. It was all a whirlwind. The book had a little more about the transition to including women in special operations units but again, never came back to the topic after that one time it came up.
I also wanted more about the lead up to Trump—Simone and her husband leave Georgia just after Trump is elected.
IMO the book is really good. I wish it were longer.
I’d like to know what people with personal experience—other military spouses —think of it.

Thank you to Net Galley and Simon and Schuster for an early copy of The Wives by Simone Gorrindo

Army wife Simone Gorrindo has shared the high points and great lows of agreeing to a new lifestyle when her husband, Andrew, reveals that he wishes to join the service. Simone is ill-prepared for what this entails as she struggles with the overwhelming anxiety of a new environment ruled by the army, her husband's absences and the dangers they both must live with. She must also navigate the social realm of an army base in her quest to connect with other wives and develop friendships.

Simone and Andrew carry on, not giving up on their relationship even during their darkest times with separation, lack of relevant information from the Army, and lack of support. To their credit, they seek the help of a therapist to help in identifying their problems.

Simone vacillates between great strength and overwhelming anxiety throughout her time at Fort Benning. A particularly difficult pregnancy progressing while her husband is deployed demonstrates what she is made of and does offer her new understandings of perhaps letting go of some of her anxiety.

It will be interesting to read reviews from other Army wives as they also live this life and can identify with Simone Gorrindo's feelings and actions.

Even though this was a book about military wives, I could relate to some of it from being a stay at home mom. I really enjoyed the book. I can't imagine how hard it would be to be a military wife and this was an interesting read about one person's experience.

I loved this book, as I live in columbus,georgia, it was very interesting. a great story of an army wife.

A well-written chronicle of the life of (at least one) military wife. Easy to resonate with Ms Gorrindo, even when I don't have any of the same background. A very different viewpoint for the miltiary

Loved this book; well-written account of the sacrifice and daily life of an army wife. The author speaks from experience about the daily anxiety, experiences and her effort to support her husband as he enlists in a Special Ops unit at Fort Benning. I appreciated being educated about the challenges one lives when it involves having your husband overseas in combat, as well as away in training with their unit.
Solidly written, solid storyline and a unique perspective of a topic everyone should read about as these men & women commit to a lifestyle that offers the rest of us a peaceful place in our own life.

"The Wives" by Simone Gorrindo is a compelling memoir that chronicles the author's journey through marriage, motherhood, and the quest for self-discovery. Gorrindo navigates the complexities of modern womanhood with candor, exploring the challenges of societal expectations and personal fulfillment. Her narrative is both intimate and thought-provoking, delving into themes of identity, ambition, and the pursuit of authenticity. Gorrindo's writing is powerful and evocative, inviting readers to reflect on their own lives. "The Wives" is not only a personal memoir but also a universal exploration of the intricate balance between societal roles and individual aspirations.

This book The Military Wives is a powerful memoir about the wives of the men in the Army. Not knowing any military wives but one whose husband is in the coast guard, I know very little but this book is believable and I can only imagine how hard this life is! I think this author did a great job honoring the spouses in the military. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this early release in exchange for my honest review. To be published April 2024.

The Army wife has a special place in the military and in the readiness of our armed forces. The Wives by Simone Gorrindo. Thank you #NetGalley for the digital ARC, takes us on her journey of dealing with the mundane to the terrifying aspects of living with a spouse on active duty.

This was an interesting read. It was interesting to read about the life’s of military wife’s.
Thank you NetGalley, Simone and Gallery Books for the ARC!

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I picked this one up. I can’t identify with the experiences of a military wife. Still, I am a military mom of two, so I feel I have some knowledge of the sacrifices faced by military families. The lack of communication and the general anxiety felt when the world gets dangerous –are things familiar to me. This was an intriguing look at the life of a military wife, with all the difficulties and stress associated with having a spouse on deployment. I did feel, however, a pervasive sense of condescension throughout the book – as if the author only barely tolerated these other wives, especially those of enlisted men. It left me with a little bit of an uncomfortable feeling. The book highlighted the stresses of having a spouse in the military, especially one deployed for long periods. It made me grateful for those who serve faithfully next to their military spouses. Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and author, for an advanced copy. All opinions are my own.

I just finished The Wives by Simone Gorrindo. This is a realistic chronicle of the life of a military spouse when a spouse is a member of an elite unit, deployed most of the time. It's an honest look at a life in which your spouse can be deployed with 24 hours notice. You have no idea where they are in the world. There is little or no communication. These spouses pray that they won't see a strange car in the driveway as the notification unit comes to let them know that their spouse is gone.

I would highly recommend this title to all readers.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a free digital copy of this book from Net Galley.

#TheWives#SimoneGorrindo#NetGalley

Wow! This is an insightful book about the lives of army wife’s. Simone’s telling of her tale transitioning into army life from civilian life. The ups and downs when her husband I’d deployed to Afghanistan. Her interaction with the other army wives. The heartbreaks, fears and joys. The impact on all of their family mental and emotional lives. Very good read. Must read. I was given an advanced reader copy of this very well written book by NetGalley and I am freely sharing my review.

The Wives was a wonderful book full of nuance and insight to the world of military wives. With many military wife friends, it was helpful to better understand the deep trust and connection formed by people in the same or similar circumstances. Simone is a wonderful storyteller who I was rooting for throughout the book.

I received an advanced copy of The Wives from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was really interested to read this book considering I've had relatives in the military, but never someone as closely connected as a spouse. This was a fascinating look into the life of a woman who never wanted to be a military spouse and how her husband's choice to join the military impacted her and their relationship. While the various military wives that Simone meets and befriends play a major role in the book, I do feel like the later chunk of the book was more about her relationship with her husband and how they worked through their marital disagreements. While I wish the wives had played an even bigger role, I still found myself enjoying the book overall.

I was excited to read this book as I have been a military spouse for 18.5 years and was a military brat. My husband was former Army who wanted to go to Ranger school but ended up swapping to AF. I wanted to learn what the life was like. It was not at all what I expected. It wasn’t a look into what the lives are like as much as a long list of complaints about her issues with the military, the wives, and America.

Unfortunately the author comes off extremely anti-American (to the point she makes the comment about the flag bothering her) and her liberal ideology is woven throughout the book.

The book starts off with some background info into her life. She grew up in California and ends up moving to New York. Her and her husband had known each other from California and he tells her he’d pick the Army over her. They go to couple therapy where she decides she does love him enough to follow him. They have a court wedding and move to GA where she is immediately thrown into Army life and he is deployed.

She talks about how Rachel her neighbor and her become immediate friends. This is typical military spouse life. You move and you find friends immediately who become closer than family in many cases because they’re the ones there for you during the rough times when the spouses are gone. I felt like she did a good job with explaining what it is like to be thrown into the military lifestyle especially as an outsider; unfortunately, that’s about where the good ends.

What bothered me so much though was she begins to air the wives secrets. Clearly she doesn’t know the unwritten spouse rules because I’d never be okay with someone airing things I’d told them about marital problems, squadron issues, just life. I’m hoping she got permission to share for example how one of the men in the unit was verbally abusive after drinking too much. Or how another wife wrote papers for her husband for college (I’m waiting for him to get into trouble for plagiarism and his career to be over) because the military has decided that in addition to their insane training schedule and deployment rotation they need to get a college degree. These were just a few of the examples of airing others dirty laundry.

My other issue was how she sees enlisted wives. She says at one point speaking about officers’ wives, “I had more in common with them than enlisted wives. An obvious shared cultural experience was college…. We’d grown up, most of us, in leafy suburbs and midsized cities with bookstores and a decent collection of restaurants, not rural, 3,000 person towns…” First off, I’m an officer wife whose dad was enlisted. My parents were not college educated but we did live in large towns. Once my dad got out we spent the majority of my childhood between Seattle and California. My parents had grown up in the Seattle area. She again makes a comment, “Sometimes, I wondered if the officer wives looked at me the same way. The wife of an enlisted man? Must be an interim gig. Way too smart.” This is so pretentious. She acts like the average enlisted wife is a dumb bimbo who is barefoot and pregnant all of the time. I feel bad for the enlisted wives who read this. I know women who went to college and refuse to read a book. And I know people who never went to college who are smarter than college educated people. Another direct quote of hers, “every officer wife I’d met so far seemed well-bred in a way those kids from my high school had, like they’d probably grown up with dance lessons and summer camps and sweet notes in their lunch boxes.” Again, as an officer wife, I didn’t grow up with any of that. She has an extremely jaded view of the enlisted wives and these are just a few examples.

If she’s not complaining about the wives and their lack of education she’s complaining about the deployments. Yes, they’re hard. Yes they suck. She’s active duty and those wives are amazing about jumping in to help out. She does talk about how Rachel helped her as she massively struggled with anxiety and as someone who myself struggles with anxiety I could relate to her on this one issue. But I could not imagine literally moving in with someone else for months on end (what seemed to be the case) because of anxiety.

The one positive she talks about is mental health care. Her and her husband actually go to see a counselor which is huge especially in the SF community where they believe in taking care of things on their own.

If the book hadn’t had such a jaded view I still couldn’t give it a high rating. It jumped around quite often and felt very flat. Often, the only time she went into deep descriptions on people or places was when they were bad. I loved the show and book series “Army Wives” even if it wasn’t accurate because of how engaging it was. I thought this would be fun to read but instead she shoved her politics and anti religious views down my throat. At the end she even speaks to her husband’s disdain towards President Trump. While we have a president that we are completely opposed to now and weren’t huge Trump fans, I cannot imagine my husband or myself airing our blatant disrespect towards them. The president is their boss at the end of the day.

I asked other military spouses about some of these quotes and we all agreed they were out of line. Many said they would absolutely not pay to read this book.

I saved a ton of quotes please feel free to read through them.

I enjoyed this book for many reasons. The main one being that Simone is an incredible author. Her writing is smart and beautiful and witty and fluent.

However, my rating is stuck at three stars because I found her prose of a military wife to be … illogical. That might not be fair to her and I won’t pretend that her book allowed me a front row seat to her marriage in its entirety but I didn’t understand half of the things she was so upset about throughout the book.

This is a very good, well written autobiographical account of Simone Gorrindo’s first few years as that disposable commodity, an Army wife. Yes, disposable, because if the Army wanted you to have a family … most of you know how the rest of that goes. If you don't, Gorrindo explains it at some halfway point or another. And if you still don’t, then you are an example of something that Gorrindo didn’t intend to expose, probably doesn’t know that she did: the loss of the country’s military tradition.

What? you say, what loss? We’re still fighting wars and throwing troops willy and nilly about the world. Yes, we certainly are, but not in the same manner we did for hundreds of years and not for the same reasons. We don’t send our army anymore; we deploy specialized units. We do not defeat an enemy; we contain a situation. These are the wars Eisenhower warned us about in his military-industrial complex speech. And the sense of national pride and regard that Americans used to hold for the military in general has devolved into a bare toleration, an “I suppose” view of military activity and its personnel.

This comes out rather clearly in Gorrindo’s book, especially for us boomers of the 50s and 60s, who still hold that traditional respect. Our parents fought in WW2. Their parents fought in WW1. We heard all the stories, saw the old medals and put-away uniforms, and sensed that shared but silent camaraderie whenever the old folks got together. We kept that respect in the face of Vietnam and other missteps because we knew it wasn’t the Army’s fault, it was feckless politicians and them damned hippies. And then the wars sort of dwindled into nothing more than a police action here and there or that ridiculous walkover of Desert Storm and we didn’t need to think about it anymore. We’d won.

Then the Towers fell.

So gear up the Army and march to … where? Fight who? Okay, turn Afghanistan into a parking lot, Iran and Iraq, too, and then what? We didn’t know, and the war turned into a series of deployments by specialized units to specific locations to conduct specific missions. It was like commandos during WW2 going out to sink Nazi battleships at anchor, just one action within a larger one, except we don’t know what the larger one is anymore.

Gorrindo’s husband, Andrew, leaves an affluent position in New York City at a rather advanced age - for an army grunt - to go fight the barbarians and salute, man, you are hard core. He becomes one of those deployed fighters in a specialized unit, a squared away righteous man with the righteous attitude except maybe he cries too much. Suck it up, man, rub some dirt on it. Simone is his fiancee and she is not for this at all, not at all, is downright appalled. I mean, why would you leave the cushiness of some comfortable job with guaranteed promotions in an affluent location surrounded by friends with the politically correct sophisticated views of culture and life to risk life and limb?

I get it. The rest of us who served do, too. But we are a fast shrinking fraction of the population.

SImone doesn’t get it, especially when Andrew tells her that, if he has to choose between her and the Army, then they can say goodbye now. To give Simone credit, she loves him enough to marry into 'terra incognita:' the culture and traditions of the military wife, and follows him down to Ft. Benning, GA which, if any you have ever been there, is proof beyond a shadow of just how much she loves him.

But she doesn’t love the military, is baffled by it, suspicious, unsure why anyone would waste their lives in it. She holds the same unconscious contempt for the military that all of her sophisticated college educated friends do, a condescending, downright patronizing dismissal of the institution and its people. Of course only losers and Trump voters join the military, and she has the same sneering contempt for Trump that is dutifully required among her set, although she cannot provide any concrete reason for despising him. All that patriotism and individual rights and letting people make their own decisions instead of a paternal well knowing government of similarly educated persons as herself making the right decisions for the peasants, I guess.

She does love the wives, though, her fellow “dependents” sharing the misery of constant deployment, macho culture, the standard idiocies of military life, and the overall annoyance the military brass feels for the family. Her friends and not-so-friends are an excellent cross section of the various socioeconomic and cultural levels that end up as wives and families of soldiers. Gorrindo does an excellent job presenting their various stories and heartbreaks and triumphs as they deal with a murderous deployment schedule that leaves them more times alone in their substandard houses than with their husbands. It is the way of the warrior.

But there is a bit too much “what about me?” drifting around Gorrindo, which is the death knell of many a military marriage. I won’t say what happens. You need to read this because Gorrindo will surprise you. But she is an anthropologist reporting back to her fellow science society members on a primitive tribe she has encountered in the jungle. You can almost see her and her friends exchanging jaw-dropped expressions as she relates various aspects of the wives’ lives, from childbirth to book club meetings.

In her defense, Gorrindo questions many of her assumptions, tries to see it from both sides, even quotes that ‘rough men’ trope from Kipling. But she displays a bit of contempt for the rough men and the need for them, seeming to hold that tired adolescent view that rough men should just stop being rough men then we could all go back to our unicorns and merry-go-rounds.

It’s the same attitude the later ruling classes of Rome held towards their military. Until the Visigoths showed up.

I lived in a military family for more than 25 years. I really enjoyed this book. It was a fondly remembered blast from the past. Bravo!