My Husband’s Wife is Alice Feeney’s addictive eighth novel, in which she continues to showcase her unparalleled skills at crafting the unexpected twist within crime plots that straddle the delicate line between realism and ridiculousness. Alice Feeney’s stock-in-trade is placing ordinary citizens in extreme situations and documenting the process as everyone—characters and reader—tries to figure out what is actually going on.
As My Husband’s Wife opens, Eden Fox leaves her newly purchased Hope Falls home—Spyglass—for her daily run, but it’s the return to the residence that signals something is very wrong. Eden’s key no longer fits into the lock and then a woman who resembles Eden opens the door claiming that Spyglass belongs to her. It’s only when her husband, Harrison Woolf, sides with the strange woman that Eden herself becomes confused and begins to doubt her own reality.
The cat and mouse…er, Fox and Woolf game that follows would be enough plot to fill any other author’s domestic suspense novel, but this is Alice Feeney—so this tangled strand is just the beginning of a much larger web of intrigue. To this mix, the author adds a local male cop with ties to the women, a newly-hired female police chief, who also happened to have inherited Spyglass six months prior before selling it to Harrison and Eden, and a young patient at a medical facility who remains stuck in the mind of an 8-year-old after a tragic accident. (This just scratches the surface of the “complications” introduced, but highlights Feeney’s ability to weave together what most would consider impossible.)
The execution of this complex case is nothing short of compelling. Readers—even when things stray a bit too close to unrealistic coincidences—will be so invested in knowing the truth that the pages continue to fly by. There is a section about two-thirds of the way into My Husband’s Wife where every single chapter ends with a twist that completely shifts the novel’s trajectory—chapter after chapter, for maybe a stretch of a dozen chapters. It leaves the reader discombobulated and perfectly primed for the wild madness that the conclusion of the book brings.
Some readers may feel that this “everything but the kitchen sink” method of plotting is overkill, but few will be able to deny getting caught in its web. It’s true that a few of the plotlines fade when they are no longer needed as distraction, but Alice Feeney is always in control and knows where the book is headed and how best to get the reader to join her on this journey. My Husband’s Wife is the type of book that makes you long for just another hour of reading time until you finally realize the weekend is over and you turn the last page staring at the book exhausted, satisfied, and dying to talk to someone else who has read the book and knows what you are feeling.
BUY LINKS: My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney
Disclaimer: An e-galley of this title was provided to BOLO Books by the publisher. No promotion was promised and the above is an unbiased review of the novel.
