Reviews with content warning for Misogyny - Recipe for a Perfect Wife

I absolutely loved this book! An easy read but with the added mysteries and small twists to keep you intrigued. I also love books that go back and forth between two different times and don't make it confusing. The only complaint I had was

it seemed like the baby was a bandaid on Alice and Nates relationship. I would have like to see some more diving in to resolving their issues.

Content Warnings

lennybiird's review against another edition

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emotional informative reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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kelly_e's review against another edition

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dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

Title: Recipe for a Perfect Wife
Author: Karma Brown
Genre: Fiction
Rating: 3.50
Pub Date: January 21, 2020

T H R E E • W O R D S

Dark • Illuminating • Unsettling

📖 S Y N O P S I S

When Alice Hale leaves a career in publicity to become a writer and follows her husband to the New York suburbs, she is unaccustomed to filling her days alone in a big, empty house. But when she finds a vintage cookbook buried in a box in the old home’s basement, she becomes captivated by the cookbook’s previous owner–1950s housewife Nellie Murdoch. As Alice cooks her way through the past, she realizes that within the cookbook’s pages Nellie left clues about her life–including a mysterious series of unsent letters penned to her mother.

Soon Alice learns that while baked Alaska and meatloaf five ways may seem harmless, Nellie’s secrets may have been anything but. When Alice uncovers a more sinister–even dangerous–side to Nellie’s marriage, and has become increasingly dissatisfied with the mounting pressures in her own relationship, she begins to take control of her life and protect herself with a few secrets of her own.

💭 T H O U G H T S

After reading (and absolutely loving) Come Away with Me by Karma Brown earlier in 2022, I knew I wanted to read another one of her books before the end of the year. Since this one was on my shelf it's what I went with and came away having very mixed feelings.

What worked:
• the potential. Modern-day woman meets 1950s housewife exploring what it means to be a wife fighting for her place in a patriarchal society. Two women. 60 years apart. Dual narrative. Food. Identity. Love. Secrets. Yes. Yes. Yes.
• the vintage vibes. This aspect of the book is very well done. It gave me the feeling of living during a time period I didn't actually live through.
• the recipes and quotes to start each chapter. These offered perspective and added a humurous touch to the plot development. I even tested out a few of the recipes, without much luck though.
• the exploration of societal roles. I thought this was interesting to dive into.

What didn't work:
• a lack of connection. I never felt invested in the story or the characters lives.
• the execution. There was just something about it taken all together that didn't work as I anticipated it would.

Unfortunately, Recipe for a Perfect Wife was very anti-climatic despite having a strong foundation. It was reflective and mysterious while exploring how roles have changed and how they've stayed the same over the years. With that said, Karma Brown did wrote one of my favourites of 2022, so I look forward to exploring more of her backlist and reading her upcoming 2023 release.

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• fans of the light thriller
• bookclubs

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"The sun always returned...as long as you were strong enough to wait for it."

"'Sally, the hardest question we have to ask ourselves in this life is, 'Who am I?' Ideally, we answer it for ourselves, but be warned that others will strive to do it for you—so don’t let them.'"

Content Warnings

greatexpectations77's review against another edition

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challenging reflective tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This definitely kept me engaged, but sometimes the foreshadowing was a bit heavy-handed. I don't love something being hinted at three times before actually coming out with it. But I was surprised by some events as the plot moved forward.

Although the moral seems to be that life with men is at worst, abusive, and at best, vastly disappointing. Pretty bleak look at the lives of women barely improving in the last 60 years

Content Warnings

lovelymisanthrope's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I picked up this book while I was killing time in a bookstore out of state. The title and cover really caught my eye, and I was so intrigued by the premise.
This novel follows dual perspectives and two different timelines. Nellie is a picturesque housewife from the 1950s. She seems to have the perfect life AND the perfect husband, but her life is not everything everyone believes it to be. Alice, a modern woman, was a successful publicist until she lost her job. Her and her husband decide to leave the city life behind and move into a house in the suburbs that needs a little TLC. Alice discovers letters that uncover the former house owner: Nellie. Alice becomes obsessed with learning what happened to Nellie in this house.
This is a very interesting book because one of the main characters is HIGHLY unlikable. Alice is insufferable at times, and despite having the seemingly perfect and supportive husband that most woman would kill for, she continues to make choices that hurt him, and she continues to lie to him even when she is given the opportunity to tell him the truth. I found it slightly unbelievable and entirely disheartening that she did not tell her husband why she got fired from her job, instead she told him that she quit. She also continued to lie to him about wanting children and strung him along, even though she was on birth control. Then, at the end she gives him an absurd ultimatum that made no sense to me (I get it from a novel perspective and furthering her character's state of mind, but as a soon-to-be wife, I hated it). Nellie on the other hand was amazing. She was thoughtful and tactful in her schemes against her abusive husband. I loved Nellie and I think she epitomes strength and intelligence.
I really enjoyed that we got Nellie's perspective through letters, and I also loved seeing her in comparison to Alice. Women have come a long way from the oppressive times of the 1950s. I think this book opens up the conversation that some women want to be housewives, and that is okay, but it is not okay when that is the only option. I loved this book, and I really enjoyed the mystery of what happened to Nellie.
The only reason I docked this book a star is because I hated Alice so much, but otherwise I highly recommend this!

Content Warnings

shrutislibrary's review

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mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

"Women have so few choices, Nellie. Our gender can be our greatest strength, but it is also our greatest weakness."

Have you ever been on a train you were promised would be a fast ride, which started pretty slow and steady, then arrived at the last station without ever hitting the highest speed you had anticipated?

Well, this book felt exactly like that. It didn't ever cross that maximum speed limit.

Let me explain.

The story follows two parallel timelines, one in 2018 navigating the recent move of married couple Nate & Alice Hale who leave their city life behind in New York City to shift to quiet suburban life in Greenville. The other jumps back in time following Richard and Nellie Murdoch who lived in the same house that the Hales recently bought back in 1956.

Unsettled by the house move which is crumbling in aspect but has a lovely garden to its credit & her husband Nate's designs to get her pregnant, Alice is feeling discomfort, unease & uncertain of her future. Will she become the boring suburban housewife, just content in cooking and cleaning for her hardworking husband?
Who am I? A failed wife, an amateur novelist, a liar? These questions plague Alice.

The 1950s plotline unfolds when Alice chances upon the letters written by Nellie to her mother Elsie and the family cookbook passed down from her mother to Nellie. Through this correspondence, we, like Alice, witness the unravelling of Nellie Murdoch's perfectly happy life & marriage.

This novel shows the lack of agency women had back in the olden days, & even now when it comes to making choices in their lives in general & their marriages in particular: be it regarding their bodies, sex, childbearing, career, or whether or not they should be wearing kitten heels or flats to Tupperware parties. It explores themes like female desire, women's roles in traditional heteronormative societies as efficient homemakers, 'good' wives & attentive mothers, and what a successful marriage should look like.

How far one can suffer lies, deception and abuse in marriage & how far one can do those things to present the facade of a happy marriage is the central concern. Or is it as Oscar Wilde once said "the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties."

The writing was pretty factual, and the persona of Nellie was the most enigmatic one. She displayed all the qualities of a 1950s wife. The whole book could play like a movie because of the way it was written. The thing is that I thought that the mystery element was going to be a lot stronger, but alas the key mystery/shocking event I could guess from a mile away so it didn't matter when it was delivered to me, only the mode of it varied. So overall the reading experience was okay, nothing very 'thrilling' happened as I had expected.

Content Warnings

leroyreads's review against another edition

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challenging emotional hopeful sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Content Warnings

apersonfromflorida's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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