ARC REVIEW: The Wife – by Shalini Boland

Title: The Wife
Author: Shalini Boland
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
First published: September 9th 2020
Publisher: Bookouture
Finished reading: September 4th 2020
Pages: 292

“But it all feels like an act. As if I’m going through the motions. What on earth is wrong with me?”

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and Bookouture in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

I’ve been a fan of Shalini Boland‘s psychological thrillers ever since I read her first title back in 2016, and every single book I’ve read since has been a success so far. The Wife is already my tenth psychological thriller by this author ~~(I somehow missed one earlier this year, but I plan to remedy that as soon as I have more time)~~, and without doubt another excellent example of a well written story with a shocking ending. Don’t let that rather generic title mislead you, as this story will definitely add some serious punch to what might seem like a typical set up in the beginning. Fans of the genre will have a blast reading The Wife!

The plot starts out pretty simple: we have our main character Zoe who is planning her ten-year anniversary party to celebrate this milestone with her husband. BUT. On her wedding day ten years ago, she somehow fainted before the ceremony and woke up with a gap in her memories and no recollection what happened in that missing time. Talk about introducing the amnesia element using a whole different angle! There is so much mystery around that fainting spell as well, as Zoe has a bad feeling about that missing time, but no concrete evidence that something bad actually happened… This definitely added a healthy dose of suspense as well as question marks to the plot.

There are in fact multiple elements that add to the suspense of this story. Not only do we have the missing time on Zoe’s wedding day, but we also have the disappearance of her estranged sister Dina ten years ago, the questions around what happened between Zoe and her then friend Cassie in the past and the strange things happening to Zoe in the present to contend with. This leads to a multi-dimentional plot where you will have plenty of different angles to explore and multiple possible answers to both the present and past will be revealed along the way. And while I do have to say that I found the first part of the story to be a tad slow, those super explosive final reveals definitely made up for it. Oh yes, The Wife will have more than one surprise for you in store, and I definitely didn’t see most of them coming! Without doubt another successful drop of those shocking plot twist bombs I’ve come to expect.

I confess that I wasn’t really that big of a fan of the main characters or how they behaved as a whole, but I do think that their development felt realistic and it was interesting to slowly learn more about them. Zoe is the perfect character to star this psychological thriller and both her past and the things happening to her in the present will have you under its spell. The Wife is another more than solid psychological thriller that shows that you can’t go wrong when it comes to Shalini Boland‘s books.