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A review by jenpaul13
The Wives by Tarryn Fisher
3.0
Knowing someone completely is difficult even in the best of circumstances, but when competing for a husband's attention like in Tarryn Fisher's The Wives it would be challenging to parse lies from truth.
To read this, and other book reviews, visit my website: http://makinggoodstories.wordpress.com/.
Thursday shares her husband Seth with two other women, willingly, because of how much she loves him. She hasn't met them and knows nothing about them apart from what Seth might mention, as part of their arrangement for making their plural marriage work. She puts forth a lot of effort to be the best wife possible and imagines what each of the other women are like and contribute to their unique relationship with Seth. When Thursday finds a receipt that has the name of Seth's newest wife, she can't help her curiosity and begins researching her. The information she finds leads her to discover some startling information about her husband, who no longer seems to be the man she thought he was. As her pursuit of the truth continues and new details emerge, Thursday has to face a harsh reality about her relationship with Seth.
A fast-paced story, the narrative is easy to rapidly consume and get carried away with. With an unreliable narrator, an unconventional situation, and some misdirections springing from the information obscured from the unreliable narrator, there are plenty of components that contribute to the thriller aspect of the story and capture the reader's attention; however, for those more familiar with the genre, much of the premise was easily predicted and not thrilling so much as simply unbelievable to the point where suspension of disbelief struggles to overcome it. The reveal of the truth at the end is a bit too rushed, and coupled with the more surface level explanations for the dysfunctional behavior, leaves the story lacking in substantive depth but instead rife with shock and chaos, for what seems more like the sake of being shocking and chaotic than to serve a purpose.
To read this, and other book reviews, visit my website: http://makinggoodstories.wordpress.com/.
Thursday shares her husband Seth with two other women, willingly, because of how much she loves him. She hasn't met them and knows nothing about them apart from what Seth might mention, as part of their arrangement for making their plural marriage work. She puts forth a lot of effort to be the best wife possible and imagines what each of the other women are like and contribute to their unique relationship with Seth. When Thursday finds a receipt that has the name of Seth's newest wife, she can't help her curiosity and begins researching her. The information she finds leads her to discover some startling information about her husband, who no longer seems to be the man she thought he was. As her pursuit of the truth continues and new details emerge, Thursday has to face a harsh reality about her relationship with Seth.
A fast-paced story, the narrative is easy to rapidly consume and get carried away with. With an unreliable narrator, an unconventional situation, and some misdirections springing from the information obscured from the unreliable narrator, there are plenty of components that contribute to the thriller aspect of the story and capture the reader's attention; however, for those more familiar with the genre, much of the premise was easily predicted and not thrilling so much as simply unbelievable to the point where suspension of disbelief struggles to overcome it. The reveal of the truth at the end is a bit too rushed, and coupled with the more surface level explanations for the dysfunctional behavior, leaves the story lacking in substantive depth but instead rife with shock and chaos, for what seems more like the sake of being shocking and chaotic than to serve a purpose.