Simone Gorrindo’s memoir THE WIVES is a fascinating peek at life on the homefront as military spouses cope with the unfathomable demands of a military deployment. It reads like a love letter not only to the friends who helped her through some especially grueling times, but also like a love letter to friendship itself. Gorrindo is a gorgeous writer who carries readers with her through each moment and emotion. I read the entire book in one sitting. I could not put it down.

A really good read that I did not want to put down until the book ended.The author did a really good job of making you feel like you were a military wife as you read each page. The pain and emotional suffering a wife faces while pregnant and her husband is serving our country. This book would make a great book club read. The discussion would be very interesting and informative. I really put the book down feeling like I had been informed of a lot of military issues.

I have never read anything about military wives so it was interesting to get a glimpse into what life is like for them. I have an acquaintance that is a military wife and know some of the hardships she has endured but don't know her well enough to know all of the hardships and emotions that accompany that life. I've always had a great deal of respect for these women, but now it's even deeper.

I don’t have much experience with the life of Military families, just from what I have read, and I this book is an open door to that world. Military spouses are a special group that deserve more recognition than they get. I learned a lot from this book, it was compelling and fascinating.

The Wives was an open memoir and an inside look at the life of an unlikely military wife and the military families whose spouses serve in the US Army. There were interesting parts of the book about the author’s background that made me sympathetic to her but that sympathy couldn’t carry me to get past her incredibly condescending attitude towards the other army wives. The entire time I was reading this book, I found myself cringing at the way she looked down at these women who were her supporters and community. She obviously felt superior to the women around her and her disdain for them made this a difficult read.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Before reading THE WIVES, I had never experienced reading about myself in a book. Unlike the author, I’m not a mother and I’m not even an Army wife (the title’s subject), but wow do we have almost every single other value in common. Simone was a writer and senior editor in New York City (my dream job) when her new husband decided to enlist. She was very anti-military because she was very anti-violence, but given the choice between life as she knew it and life as it could be with Andrew, she quit her job and followed him to Fort Benning. The *in-CRED-ible* amount of anxiety that followed as he went through (and re-went through) Ranger School, night jumps, other trainings, and multiple deployments to Afghanistan was breath-taking as Simone struggled to write, to sleep, to exist in a constant state of worry over her husband and in community with all the other wives left behind. As she points out multiple times, no, the wives were not the ones who went to war as part of a Special Operations Unit, but they nevertheless fought very real battles on the homefront—as lonely women and single mothers who lived every day in fear of their phones … of missing a call from their husbands and/or receiving a call from the commander that their husbands had been injured or worse. Extremely powerful, sympathetic, and pro-woman, THE WIVES considers all the nuances of living in a country where we’re free because of the brave. Thanks to the publisher for an ARC!

Simone Gorrindo's memoir, "The Wives," delves deeply into the dynamics of marriage, camaraderie, and community among a closely-knit circle of military spouses. Through her own experiences, Gorrindo provides a poignant account of her decision to leave her New York City career behind and accompany her enlisted husband to the unfamiliar territory of Columbus, Georgia. This narrative offers a compelling and personal exploration of these themes.

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery/Scout Press for this ARC of The Wives by Simone Gorrindo.

I requested this book based upon the premise of what life is like as a mysterious military wife.

Simone initially makes a life for herself through writing but generally life as the wife of a soldier and Sergeant is an insular one. She and the wives are isolated together in a way that only fellow survivors or foreign expats can be.

The wives are bonded in sublimation as they make a life alongside each other in this new world with mostly-absent husbands. “The wives were the ones I breathed like air. Andrew’s presence in my life was far more precarious.”

The military is a cosmos unto itself, with its own laws and rules, spoken and un-. “It’s not wrong or right, it’s just different.”

The men seem to know what they are signing up for - they strive for the tribal connection and purpose of war - but the wives have to adapt to the periphery as they go. “People told us, from time to time, that we knew what we were ‘signing up for.’ But who really knows what she is signing up for?” Simone writes.

The military as an institution creates soldiers. It programs (willing) young men into automaton machines. Simone initially had no idea how much “the Army would own Andrew.”
Marriage seems a tenet of this existence, yet it seemed dichotomous in this memoir, how a private or Sargent had to become a military tool yet somehow also exist in the domestic realm. “Your whole fucking life is designed to keep me from actually knowing you,” says Simone to Andrew during a couples’ therapy session.

So much of familial intimacy comes from shared quotidian experience. “The whole purpose of sharing your life with another person might be for witnessing these moments together…
All the small moments that are made strange or disquieting or
beautiful when you see them with someone else.”
“Maybe that’s why this deployment felt so wrong,” Simone writes about Andrew’s planned deployment during her pregnancy, “‘You seeing this?’ I’d say, and he wouldn’t be there to answer.”
We the reader are now seeing it.

In the satisfying conclusion of Simone’s memoir she has again made a life for herself outside of “Andrew’s world.”

Four stars.

I really enjoy reading memoirs. This one was great in the detail of explaining the close relationships formed by wives in an army setting. Set in time of Afghanistan War, it showed how the wives of deployed members coped with stresses of war.

Thank you to NetGalley for this advance reader copy. I enjoyed this memoir "The Wives" by Simone Gorrindo. I liked how intimate she got about the lives of elite army wives. This subject was educational in just what army families have to go through. I am in awe of these men and the families they leave to do this life threating work. I myself know I could never do what these families do and have the utmost respect for them though I don't always agree with the subject of war, or fighting. I would recommend this book!

Thank you to NetGalley for this advance reader copy. Military life is a kind of a elite, but segregated world.. if you’re not military, you really don’t fit in but if you are military and you can mesh with others, it makes your life a lot easier. Simone discusses her life throughout the years and these facts are helpful for other is going through a similar situation. I live near a large base, and I see the women bonding with one another.. I appreciate all aspects of this book, and I learned a lot about military life. These women are courageous , possibly even more determined than their husbands who are out there battling for our country. The women are the ones that support these strong men, and this book tells you all about those struggles.

The Wives is SImone's story of her early married life and the life of an Army wife. The story has many flashbacks that explain how both Simone and her husband got to the present.

Simone's husband was a part of an elite group in the Army. and early in their marriage Simone is left alone in Georgia with other Army wives.

It is somewhat a coming of age story of accepting where and who you are. It was very obvious that Simone was not a fan of living in Georgia. As a Georgia resident, the negative tone against the south and conservatives in general was very obvious...however, it was her story.

Military spouses are certainly a group that deserve more recognition...they are at times being both parents and taking care of everything at home.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC.

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