The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen

Vanessa used to be married to Richard. Nellie is getting ready to become his bride. And, someone has to warn the new bride before it's too late. But, wait . . . who is whom in this twisted thriller? You won't know for sure till the end.

And, since that's what makes The Wife Between Us a thriller (the rush to find out what's really going on and whether or not the future wife can be warned in time) I can pretty much tell you nothing about this book without giving everything away. So, instead I'll just tell you that what you think is happening at the beginning of the book is totally misleading. In Part Two, the perspective shifts and you realize that the narrators in Part One were unreliable. Who is the wife-to-be and what happened to the wife before her to make her such a nervous wreck? Will Richard's former wife succeed at her mission to warn the bride-to-be? Or will some other twist throw everything in Part Two into question.

Yeah, it's twisty, all right. Unfortunately, I thought The Wife Between Us was just a little too similar to another book I read recently. And, I didn't like the way the author played head games with me. Still, I found the authors propelled me along nicely. Apart from a slightly dull beginning and a jarring shift at the beginning of Part Two when I was so confused that I almost abandoned the book (I took a brief break from it, came back, and it made sense after I'd had time to let the story roll around in my head), I found that the pages flew.

Recommended but not a favorite - In general, I'd say The Wife Between Us was an average to slighty above-average read. I had trouble getting into the book, at first, and part of that was because it was immediately apparent to me that Richard was a controlling jerk. I couldn't understand why Nellie was even interested in him, much less why two women would have fallen for him during his charming moments but not run after seeing his dark side. But, the main problem was that I disliked the shift from Part One to Part Two and never fully managed to get those wives straight in my head after picturing them a certain way and then having it all mixed up, as if images of the wives had been turned to confetti, tossed into the air, and then settled into different pictures when reformed on the ground. If you like that kind of confusion, this is definitely the book for you. Unreliable narrators, twists and turns, a surprise ending, and a quick pace (at least, after the first section) will make you race to the end to find the answers.

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