The Wife
by Alafair Burke
🌟🌟
*Disclaimer: All Amazon Links are affiliate links. If you purchase anything through one of my links I will get a small commission! All the thoughts and opinions in this post are mine and in no way influenced by Amazon.
I feel like I need to give a disclaimer about my rating. The 2 stars is because I personally didn’t like the book, but that is just my opinion. I don’t think there was anything wrong with the book in general, I just didn’t like it. It is a psychological thriller / mystery / suspense novel, and I don’t particularly like any of those genres. If you love books like that then you might like this one. The only reason I read it at all was because it was my June bookclub book.
Even though I feel kind of bad for giving it two stars, I still wanted to write a review.
This was a tough book to read because it dealt heavily in rape allegations and cheating. If these are triggers for you then I would absolutely recommend you skip this book. I cried a lot while reading this and some of the stuff hit a little too close to home. Basically there are four different “types” of rape that happen in this story ranging from spousal rape to kidnappings. There is a lot of other messed up stuff in the story too, but I don’t want to go into details because of spoilers.
On a positive note I thought the author did a great job with all the twists and turns and keeping the reader on their toes. You could never quite tell what was happening and who to believe. You were left guessing right up until the end, when it all became clear. Also I liked the idea of seeing the story through the Wife’s point of view. (As opposed to the Victim, the Accused, or the Detective’s points of view)
Even though the ending answered all the mysteries, it was still left open. I like complete closure in my endings, so I didn’t like how the book ended. Some of the ladies at bookclub thought that it was left open for a sequel but I felt like it was more of a physiological thing to leave it open. It leaves you thinking about the “what ifs?”
Personally I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone, but the majority of the ladies in bookclub liked it, so I might not be the best person to judge it.
Perfectly Tolerable 
Open ended book – not my favorite. Lovely review. I have this book. Hope I like it
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It wasn’t a cliffhanger or anything, it wrapped up all the main plot points, but it was still to open for my taste haha. I hope you like it too ❤
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I don’t think this one would be for me to be honest so thanks for the review. A book that reduced you to tears for the wrong reasons – eek.
Lynn 😀
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You’re welcome. I have a feeling a lot of parts in this book would trigger a lot of different people for different reasons.
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Good review. I can see how this would be enjoyable for people who prefer these genres compared with someone who doesn’t. (And as such, I’ll be avoiding it. This isn’t my preferred book style, either.)
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Thanks! And yes exactly. It wasn’t for me but a lot of people would probably enjoy it.
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this one. I’ve been wanting to try one of Burke’s books but I think I’ll skip this one. I’m not a fan of open ended reads.
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I’ve heard good things about her other books! But this one just wasn’t for me. Which is, in part, to me not really liking the genre in general.
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Thanks for explaining your rating so well! I can tell some of these issues would bother me as well! Especially an mystery open!
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Thanks 🙂 I am sure a lot of people would really like this book, but personally there were too many things that I didn’t like about it!
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I really hate when this happens to me! Everyone loves the book club book but I didn’t. But honestly I relate because I don’t enjoy these types of books nor those types of open endings. I like closure. 😉
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I never seem to like the books we read as much as everyone else haha (it may have to do with the fact that I am the youngest person by 20 years and they never pick fantasy books 😂😂 )
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