A complete mind twist

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"Assume nothing."


The Wife Between Us warns us on the very cover to assume nothing. It tells us explicitly to expect a ride where we can't see the road ahead. It tells us, and still, the assumptions came. Still I tried to see.
There are three people involved in this book: Richard, his ex-wife and his current fiancé. Throughout the book though, we only get the perspective of the two women. Richard is the thing that ties them together, but this book is about the women.


We are taken down a road of perceptions. How we perceive ourselves, how other people perceive us, how we perceive those perceptions. And the writers have taken it a step further and involved the reader into these impressions. They rely on how we understand and predict characters, plot, twists. This novel is fiction, but it is also interactive. We are part of the twists, whether we like it or not.
The subtlety in the writing is stunning. Hendricks and Pekkanen lull us into the very assumptions they warn us against. They woo us into believing that the warning is a hype, that there can't possibly be another angle we haven't thought about. Until the first twist hits you.


But unlike a roller coaster, where you can see the escalation and prepare for it, the first twist hits you like a car crash. Sudden. Abrupt. Unseen. Unexpected. I sat up in bed, my brain demanding that I stop and reevaluate everything I had read up until that point. And this isn't happening at the end of the book, this is merely a third of the way in.
Even after the hit, once again, the authors take us down a calmer road. They once again woo us into trusting our own beliefs. They convince us that we can't possibly be surprised again, now that we know their game, we can anticipate the next move. Except we can't.


Again and again, this novel slams into you. Taking everything you think you know and using it against you. It is brilliant and shocking and such a fantastic ride!


It's difficult to write this review, since there is so much written within the narrative that you simply have to experience yourself. It isn't a book I can't tell you about without taking away from your own ride. Just know, that it is fantastic. The psychology both in the writing of the characters and in how the writers use the readers own natural assumptions is breathtaking.


This book will be compared to many novels that have swept through the literary world. But those comparisons don't do the novel justice. This book IS the next big thing. This is the book that thrillers will be compared to and held up to. This is the book that you will talk about and recommend and obsess over.
I know that this review is very vague. I find myself struggling with how to write a review that captures the essence of what I read. Listing every synonym to fantastic, stunning, phenomenal, etc doesn't seem to be appropriate, yet I hesitate to put in any details. To give away any hints would be criminal.


I said before that this book is interactive. The reader is submersed into the characters in a way that I've never experienced before. When the narrators are unnerved, so are we. And the way we are lulled into trust and complacency is the same way that the women involved in the book are. They think they know what's happening. We think we know what's happening. They want to believe it will never happen again. We want to believe it will never happen again.
Over and over, the twists hit us as they hit the characters, and the visceral reactions you will feel are spectacular in their execution.
The dark themes of abuse, mental illness, power and control are chilling, in both their accuracy and their understated abundance. These themes are hard to decipher in real life, and the authors have ensured that they are hard to decipher within these pages as well. This is a book that deserves to be analyzed and examined and discussed. It's one of the best things I've ever experienced in a novel.


The Wife Between Us comes out January 9, and if there's one book you need to get, it's this one. Click the banner at the top of the page, or the links below to pre-order your copy today!


THE WIFE BETWEEN US
Thank you St. Martin's Press for sending me an early copy to read and review!