REVIEW:

The End.

Let’s start there. Sally Hepworth’s latest novel wraps itself up with an untidy little bow that book clubs will delight in unraveling. Some readers will want to throw their e-readers across the room after finishing. Others will scratch their heads and think, “huh?” And then some will flip back through the pages to see if they misread entire passages. All will come together for a spirited debate about interpretations.

If you haven’t read Sally Hepworth before, she excels at writing page-turning “women’s fiction” with just the right mix of characterization and suspense. In The Younger Wife, two thirty-something daughters learn that their 60-something father, Stephen, is engaged to a woman their age. But wait, there’s more! First he must divorce their mother, who is very much still alive but suffering from advanced dementia.

(Can you imagine? If my mom was still alive, in a care home, and my dad divorced her to marry some chick my age… we would have words.)

So the adult daughters, Rachel and Tully, are supposed to play nice with the future younger wife, even though they’re both struggling with their own personal issues. In fact, all three women have very prominent addiction storylines:

Rachel = food

Tully = shoplifting

Heather = alcohol

But it’s Stephen’s tendency’s we should be worrying about… or should we? Dun dun DUN!!!

Clearly yours truly is addicted to books, and The Younger Wife gave me one of those reading highs where you can’t turn the pages fast enough and always want to get back to the story when you have to set it aside for annoying life maintenance issues. Though I found the presentation of some of the addictions to be a bit too heavy handed, and I personally didn’t love The End, I want more of what Sally Hepworth is selling. Gimme gimme gimme.

My thanks to the author and St. Martin’s Press for the gifted advance copy to review via NetGalley. The expected US publication date is April 5, 2022.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

Stephen Aston is getting married again. The only problem is, he's still married to his first wife, even though she is in a care facility for dementia. But he'll take care of that easily, by divorcing her - even if his adult daughters protest.

Tully and Rachel Aston look upon Heather as nothing but an interloper. Heather is the same age as Rachel and even younger than Tully. Clearly she's a gold digger and after their father's money. Heather has secrets that she's keeping close, and reasons of her own for wanting to marry Stephen.

With their mother unable to speak for herself, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family's secrets, the new wife closing in, and who their father really is. But will getting to the truth unleash the most dangerous impulses... in all of them?