Book Blog #425: My Husband's Wife by Alice Feeney

 

Title: My Husband's Wife

Author: Alice Feeney

# of Pages: 307 (hardback)

Genre: Adult, Mystery, Thriller

Rating: ★★☆☆☆ (GR: 2 stars)

Synopsis: Eden Fox, an artist on the brink of her big break, sets off for a run before her first exhibition. When she returns to the home she recently moved into, Spyglass, an enchanting old house in Hope Falls, nothing is as it should be. Her key doesn’t fit. A woman, eerily similar to her, answers the door. And her husband insists that the stranger is his wife. One house. One husband. Two women. Someone is lying. Six months earlier, a reclusive Londoner called Birdy, reeling from a life-changing diagnosis, inherits Spyglass. This unexpected gift from a long-lost grandmother brings her to the pretty seaside village of Hope Falls. But then Birdy stumbles upon a shadowy London clinic that claims to be able to predict a person's date of death, including her own. Secrets start to unravel, and as the line between truth and lies blurs, Birdy feels compelled to right some old wrongs. My Husband’s Wife is a tangled web of deception, obsession, and mystery that will keep you guessing until the last page. Prepare yourself for the ultimate mind-bending marriage thriller and step inside Spyglass – if you dare – to experience a story where nothing is as it seems.

Review: I don't understand why this book is so popular.

This is my first Alice Feeney book, and it might be my last. Through multiple first person POVs (flaw #1), the reader follows along on the investigation surrounding Eden Fox. Each of these POVs go on long monologues about their past and misleadingly frames their story so it's impossible to tell who is going to be involved in this complicated mystery. 

Feeney threw in the whole kitchen sink into this plot; toss in a bunch of red herrings in the form of characters, plot lines that lead to nowhere. She also throws in some elements that are meant to feel sinister and mysterious (think: one character writing something ominous on the walls), but once everything is revealed it makes no sense why the characters would act/think in that way. 

The big reveal was a big let down; not surprising and didn't feel realistic to me with all the loose ends Feeney left behind in the character development. 

I really had to push through this one because it was so easy to put down; I would not recommend.