Good Evening All,

Happy 2020 to you all and happy new decade!! I hope that you all had a fantastic 2019 and I wish you all an even better 2020. 2019 was a good year for me on the reading front. I smashed my reading target of 40 books for the year by reading 48 books. Now I know that I can fit that into my already manic life, I’m going to stretch myself in 2020 and aim for 50 books. We’ll see how that works out.

Book 📖

The Stranger’s Wife by Anna-Lou Weatherley

This is a new author for me and I am always love to try new authors. Thank you to Bookouture and Anna-Lou Weatherley for this advanced readers copy in return for an honest review.

Description 🔖

Beth is a wealthy woman whom on the surface, appears to have it all; a successful husband, a beautiful daughter and a gorgeous home. Cath is on the opposite end of the spectrum; living on the breadline with a violent boyfriend and a child that was taken into care. The two women’s lives couldn’t be further apart, however a chance meeting soon reveals to them both that they have more in common than either of them would like.

General Thoughts 🤔

Firstly, I did not know that this book was the third in a series until I got till the very end. Although it read well as a standalone, I would have liked the previous 2 first as in retrospect, I feel like there were certain things I would have understood more if I had.

The book delivered what I expected in terms of twists and turns and a successful mesh of two character’s stories. Although I was completely surprised by the result of the story, I don’t think I was supposed to be and I wasn’t mad at that. The lead up to the end of the story was the important part.

There are some pretty heavy subject matters in this book but I think that they were all covered well. Domestic violence comes in many shapes and forms and I liked that the book delves into different kinds.

Characters 👫👭👬

The obvious characters to discuss are Beth and Cath, but I was also interested in other characters in the book. Beth’s husband Evan and their daughter Lily had a very interesting relationship. It was scary to read how Evan treated Lily as a pawn between himself and Beth and what effect that would have on a six year old.

I did think that the book explored Beth’s storyline a lot more than Cath’s and I would have liked to have known more about Cath. I kind of felt like her storyline just dropped off pretty abruptly, with no real conclusion.

Writing Style ✍🏽

I always like authors that write from multiple character’s perspective and Anna-Lou Weatherley has been successful in this. I knew that the stories were going to intertwine at some point, but didn’t see it coming and my interest was peaked up until that point.

As mentioned above, there are some sensitive subjects covered in this book and I think Anna-Lou Weatherley has done a fantastic job at writing them into a story in a respectful manner whilst still having an impact on the reader.

Conclusion & Scoring 🎖

I enjoyed this book and enjoyed my first experience of this author. I would have liked to have read the previous two books in the series, but hopefully there will be more of Dan Riley in the future that I can dive into.

😍😍😍😫😫