Erin Clemence's Reviews > The Wife

Oh how desperately I needed this breath of fresh air! This five-star dream of a story entered my life and all my previous reading doldrums were forgotten!

Angela has finally met the love of her life in Jason, an economics professor, and she believes she has finally found the one person who can make her forget about the tragedies of her past. Years later, Jason is a best-selling author and Angela is a stay-at-home Mom to her son, Spencer. When the police come to the door claiming Jason sexually abused a young intern, both Jason and Angela brush off the claims, assuming it is just the histrionic antics of a young student with a crush. Soon though, another woman comes forward with far more serious allegations and Angela is faced with tough questions about the man she thought she knew. When one of the women mysteriously goes missing, Angela and Jason will face their biggest marital challenge yet—will anyone survive?

Alafair Burke’s “The Wife” is one of those novels. The kind where when you are reading it, you don’t want to put it down and when you aren’t reading it, you dream about when you can read it again (please tell me that isn’t just me?) Right from the beginning, the plot immediately drew me in, and it continued to hit me with suspense and plot twists right through to the end.

The short chapters helped to not only build suspense but to contribute to this novel’s ability to be completely un-put-down-able. Burke’s writing is creative and addictive, and her characters are just dysfunctional enough to be believable. Burke draws you completely under her spell, as each character is just as likely to be guilty as the last.

When I had the esteemed pleasure of meeting Ms. Burke a few months ago, she stated that she did not know how this novel would end until she had actually written it. To think that this novel played out completely unplanned is even more awe-inspiring. The end had, of course, a nice little twist that I was not completely able to figure out until its reveal (although the idea of the idea of the ending was playing in the back of my mind as I tried to guess the outcome) which made this novel that much more entertaining.

Obviously, I am a huge fan of Burke and this novel is even better than “The Ex” (which I also loved) . I anxiously await the next novel by Burke, and I will definitely have to check out her coauthored works with Mary Higgins Clarke.