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Synopsis:
Debut author Darby Kane thrills with this twisty domestic suspense novel that asks one central question: shouldn’t a dead husband stay dead?
Lila Ridgefield lives in an idyllic college town, but not everything is what it seems. Lila isn’t what she seems. A student vanished months ago. Now, Lila’s husband, Aaron, is also missing. At first these cases are treated as horrible coincidences until it’s discovered the student is really the third of three unexplained disappearances over the last few years. The police are desperate to find the connection, if there even is one. Little do they know they might be stumbling over only part of the truth….
With the small town in an uproar, everyone is worried about the whereabouts of their beloved high school teacher. Everyone except Lila, his wife. She’s definitely confused about her missing husband but only because she was the last person to see his body, and now it’s gone.
Review:
There are some books that I cannot explain what motivates me to read them. Pretty Little Wife, the debut novel by Darby Kane, is one of them. I know I ordered it as part of the Book of the Month selections in November 2020, and looking back at the selections that month, this was probably the best choice (most likely to be read even though it took almost four years). Darby Kane has been publishing a new book every year since 2020, and after reading Pretty Little Wife, it is no wonder that she has a good readership.
Pretty Little Wife starts with Lila Ridgefield finding her husband’s secret phone filled with explicit videos of him having sex with his high school students. Lila is devastated that her perfectly cold marriage is being ruined by her husband’s predator desires so she decides to kill him. She executes a plan, but instead of authorities finding his dead body in his car on the school grounds, they find nothing, no car, no body, no husband. While Aaron’s disappearance starts and investigation, Lila is also trying to find out what happened to him and where he is hiding out. There is a great deal of tension in several different relationships, but the one battle that drives the novel is between Lila and Ginny, the lead investigator into Aaron’s disappearance. The women are a lot alike, usually the smartest and most cunning person in the room, and pitting them against each other is the most compelling part of the novel because you honestly never know who is going to become the victor until the very end.
I liked the first two acts of Pretty Little Wife, the psychological battle between Ginny and Lila added to the mystery of what actually happened to Aaron are what push this novel forward at a breakneck speed. Before the third act, many of the secrets are revealed and the final push of the novel is tying up the new information and action. It does not feel as well plotted as the first 75% of the novel and by the end, I was ready for it to be over. This is not to say that I did not enjoy the experience. I just did not have the same connection to the book by the end as I did throughout. I do think this novel is worth reading, and I will most likely read another Darby Kane novel at some point, and I respect anyone who can write a novel every year with this many twists and turns, but I am not going to be rushing out to read her other books. Maybe I will take another chance someday if one becomes a Book of the Month selection.
ghostvillehero 