The Dictator's Wife

Non-Spoiler Review:

This was one of my most anticipated releases for 2022, and you can imagine my excitement when I happened to purchase a signed copy from the author's local waterstones, and managed to speak to a bookseller who met and gushed about her; you can also imagine my disappointment when I opened this book to find this to be a load of wasted exposition and little else.

I thought this book was perhaps serve as a deep-dive to exploring the nature of dictatorships through providing a narrative to the often silenced part of these: the women. It did not do this.

The book added little to an existing narrative we have a of dictatorships already, and whilst it didn't shy away from the idea women can be just as bad as men in this regard, it was lacking.

The pacing of this was also slow and pitiful at times, and very much detracted from the point of the story.

Overall, a disappointment.