The Wife List by J A Schneider

 

From the Back Cover -

The most thrilling novel of the year.

Has a group of men conspired to murder each other's wives - figuring their perfect alibis will save them? That is what Beth Kemp starts to suspect, but is she losing her mind? Her husband says he fears so…

I'll give this marriage one more try, Beth Kemp thinks. She is a successful crime writer in New York City, who regrets that tension has crept into her relationship with her husband, Brad. He too is a writer who, after early success, finds his career fading.

Brad urges that a move to the country would make them happy again - and safe, especially Beth, to avoid the city's stress that triggers her severe asthma attacks. Beth wavers, until her close friend is murdered and the friend's husband has a perfect alibi. She finally accepts that the city with its surging crime has become too hard for her.

The Kemps move to beautiful Sheffield, Connecticut, so perfect it seems too good to be true. It is. When one new friend cries in fear about her husband, and another has a bruise under her eye, Brad tells Beth that she's overimagining. But when she hears of another wife's unsolved murder and yet another friend dies mysteriously, Beth suspects the husbands of covering for each other. Brad tells her she's getting crazy, paranoid.

Then Beth stumbles onto the most devastating shock of all, one she never imagined…

The Wife List by J A Schneider

I received a free copy of this book and my thanks to the author, J A Schneider and the team of BookSirens for the copy.

All views expressed in this review are my own and based on my reading of this book. Some of the initial comments were made as I progressed in this book and I have not tried editing them as it expresses my contiguous thoughts as I proceeded with the story.

This book beckoned and hooked me from a vast list of possible ARC's with a troika of points -

First it had a perfect catch line, "Has a group of men conspired to murder each other's wives",

Second it had a title "The Wife List" which evoked expectation and

Lastly the Cover that accentuated this book, simple yet hard-hitting, with the title superimposed over a list with speckles of blood.

My commendations to the team who designed this.

What this also did was raise my expectations beyond normal and for me more often than not it is a tough act to follow when expectations are sky high.

Why?

I am a person who loves to read books in the thriller genre and I have read books from the best in the business for well over three decades. A book with murders seemed like a good way to end January. The challenge was that the storyline was not something that was novel, there have been murder lists of spouses in other stories and exchange of murders between known/casual acquaintances has been featured in stories and well as movies.

So the challenge of expectations could be a mountain too high to climb.

This was also my first book with the author and having not read or looked up anything about her including her bio kept me neutral to the story. I approached this book like I do with any other book.

I had other urgent TBR's in my list that I wanted to complete and there were deadlines which put this book in my backburner. I started The Wife List after a gap of over two weeks from when I selected it and finished the book in the 4 days.

The book starts off almost placidly with an expected tête-à-tête between a husband and wife with some amount of gripe and with another killer line - I’ll give this marriage one more try. The gripe and the line projects a feeling of a failing marriage and brings back the title into focus.

The protagonist and her husband are both authors, writers of thrillers so murders, and like in most cases we have one's star rising and the other's setting, obviously leading to friction. Beth and Brad seem a loving couple with Beth on the cusp of hitting a home run with her new book rights. We also find out about an unexpected inheritance. Unexpected because her dad just died. One of the several deaths in the book.

This book approaches the murders couched within a family story involving friends, family, relationships both casual and serious. The banter and discussions are common place and give the story a normal setting and pace. One gets the feel of claustrophobia that comes to people who live in a big city, in this case it's NYC and the accompanying pressures of pollution, population, aloofness, the wide difference between the haves and have nots and its impact on law and order, drugs and crime especially violent crime. These form a massive smorgasbord that drives this story along.

In complete contrast the escape plan is to move to Sheffield, Connecticut which is a couple of hours drive away from NYC, a beautiful suburb setting and diametrically opposite to the hustle bustle of the city. The descriptions of the town is very well written and would entice the reader to put this book aside and move into the beautiful idyllic settings along with the protagonists.

The Wife List starts off in NYC with murder(s) and the city's rising crime rates hitting closer to home via precise context settings, which push the principal characters to think about moving towards the suburbs. Beth's family and medical history make her a character who finds it difficult to tide over sudden unnerving incidents. She is severely asthmatic. Situational machinations give cause to increase her asthma through a series of murder/deaths which lead to increased paroxysm and a blurring between real life and the books that both are writing, each fueling the other till Beth becomes hysterical and a bundle of nerves.

The Sheffield area forms the basis for most of the novel and like most thriller/mystery stories we have a wave of characters with seemingly suspicious looking activities and being at the wrong places and exchanging dubious glances and expressions. JAS tries to do her utmost in drifting suspicions away from the actual culprits. There are the usual suspects and suspicious red herrings all over the place like in most similar stories. Beth's descent into despair and suspicion couples with the real as well as imagined assaults and accidents closer to home with a husband who has turned from being at loggerheads to a concerned loving husband all contribute to the eerie atmosphere.

For me the mystery stays within reach and there is enough in the storyline to come to a satisfactory conclusion about the murderer. Where JAS excels is ensuring that the suspect list is made murkier with characters. And she surprised me with removing someone who I had put in the accessory list.

For me this book ticks most of the required points of a thriller and is a good fast paced read.

What prevents me from giving perfect marks to this book is the fact that the story is old wine with better packaging but nothing stands out outrageously in the story. The characters are also too smooth and convenient. Like just being from a poorer background does not make a person a gold-digger (either sexes) and conversely neither does a prim proper family background make a person a saint when it comes to money, inheritance, etc. But these points are of not much impact in the story. What caused me to dock a point to this story and what I feel is the only major letdown to the story was the ease in which a policeman becomes a confidant for Beth. With corruption rife in administration, the odds of reaching a person who is good in the police force is the equivalence of winning at Bingo.

But to be fair to the author, this is a fabulous book to read and I would be looking up towards its sequels if any and other books from the J A Schneider stable.

Recommended to all readers looking for a thrilling fast paced fare.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Stars

Please do not forget to post your comments. I am an equal opportunity person so would love to hear your love or your hate for the review or book in any order. Please write what you did not like or whether the book was an absolute disaster for you and why.

You can also write to firstsutraindia@gmail.com


Goodreads Review here -

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5329103891

Or my Social Media Handle @BookishDramas in Twitter, Instagram & Facebook. Links are given below -

https://twitter.com/bookishdramas

https://www.instagram.com/bookishdramas/

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100088404892842