Ah, I feel a mystery/thriller binge coming along. Especially with audio books.
Seth is, admittedly, a polygamist. He currently has three wives. He stays with them for a couple days a week then moves on to the next wife as scheduled. It’s not a very ideal arrangement but the wives seem to treasure every moment spent with him. All of them are crazy over him even if they only get him for three days max. The wives have never met and per arrangement, should never meet.
The first part was definitely a full 5 stars. The set up of the whole “multiple wives” idea was so smooth. Every(other)day, this guy goes home to a different wife and they are coded depending on what day he comes home to them. The book’s POV is the Thursday wife. It’s made clear at the beginning that this is a polygamous relationship and not simply a secret affair he’s holding with many women. The Thursday wife seemed to be “okay” with the arrangement and basked in the attention he was giving her during their time together.
But that doesn’t mean she was not curious. She knew of the other wives but of course, she doesn’t know them personally. Their arrangement involves them never meeting or not exchanging any personal information. Until Thursday sees a seemingly random communication bearing one of the other wives’ names. Curiosity gets the better of her and she decides to investigate.
This opens a whole network of deceit and manipulation. Who are these other Wives? Who really is this Husband?
Then we get to the second half of the novel where everything starts to unravel. And everything got out of hand too fast. At least for me. It wasn’t bad per se. It wasn’t even too-too predictable. But it wasn’t that… satisfying? I appreciate the fact that it did keep me guessing until the very end. However, it was all over the place. So many things happened one after the other and it didn’t click all that well. The ultimate fates of some of the main players in the book only had a sentence of explanation and after a set-up like this one had, that simply wasn’t satisfying enough.
The book dealt with a lot of things: polygamy, loss, mental health, abuse. I love that the reader was kept in the dark from a lot of things by using a single POV to tell the story. It kept me wanting to know more and while I was disappointed with the ending, reading the set-up part was totally enjoyable.
The Wives by Tarryn Fisher.
Actual rating: 3.5 stars. Maybe a 3.75 even.
Shelf Pickings 