The Wives

I really had no idea that the book would go the way it did, but WOW. I did not expect anything that happened in this book.

Five Stars hands down!! What a fantastic thriller...highly recommend.

Synopsis: Thursday is married to Seth who also has two other wives. The marriage arrangement between Thursday and Seth is that none of his wives will ever cross paths and other than knowing of each others existence there is absolutely no questioning the arrangement. That is until Thursday stumbles upon Monday's personal information and her world is completely turned upside down by a man she really doesn't even know.

Trigger Warning: Discussions of miscarriages, domestic violence, and institutionalization due to mental health concerns

I absolutely loved this story and the characters the author created. Thursday is so wrapped up in being this private detective to find out more information about the other wives that she can't seem to really grasp what's right in front of her eyes. Seth is a real jerk and is a master manipulator, when his character spoke I wanted to throw my kindle across the room! The way in which he preyed on poor Thursday's weaknesses was disheartening and even more so when Thursday began to question her own reality. When we finally get the full truth to the life that Seth has created for himself and his wives I was so taken aback and I really really didn't want Thursday to be portrayed as the bad guy. The ending was a punch to your gut but was exactly what I was hoping to see happen.....sorry not sorry!

So many twists and turns! I read this book in one sitting!!! It was good!

really interesting premise til about halfway through, then it became a little silly and felt too contrived for The Thrillzzzz label.

When I saw the synopsis for this book, I knew I had to immediately read it. It follows “Thursday”, who is in a polygamist relationship with her husband, Seth. Seth has two other wives nicknamed “Monday” and “Tuesday,” and the number one rule is that they cannot meet each other. Monday is Seth's first wife, Tuesday is pregnant, and that is all of the information that “Thursday” knows about them until she finds a doctor's note in Seth's pocket with the name Hannah written on it. Through the rabbit hole of Google and Facebook, she finds the glossy, modelesque Hannah, who lives in a Victorian House with perfectly trimmed hedges.

Thursday prides herself on being the “perfect wife,” who cooks elaborate meals and whose life revolves around her husband; however, upon finding Hannah, she becomes obsessed with learning more about her husband's life outside of their Thursday nights. Due to her curiosity, she strikes up a friendship with Hannah without her knowing that they are married to the same man. As their friendship develops, Hannah starts developing bruises, and instantly Thursday wonders, are those bruises from her seemingly loving husband?

Soon she becomes transfixed on learning more about the other wives and learning more about her husband, which becomes an extreme challenge when Seth finds out about her meeting Hannah and says she is having another mental episode. Thursday is put in a mental health facility, where she tries to dig for more information through her sister on Seth's other wives. However, upon reporting back, her sister lets her know that the Victorian house that Hannah lived in is under “Thursday's” name (as it was inherited after a family member passed away), Hannah has disappeared and may not be a real person, and Seth and Regina (Monday) got divorced years ago. This leads to questions like “Who is Hannah and is she in danger?” “What secrets are Seth hiding?” and more importantly, “Are the wives real or just something that Thursday has made up in her head?”

I wanted to love this book, and I finished it in one sitting, but the ending gut-punched me. It is definitely a book with twists and turns that will leave you on the edge of your seat, but for me, the complex themes in the book seemed to be only used to propel the story forward. While you can easily see the realistic narratives of insecurity and jealousy with the main character, the other more serious topics like gaslighting, miscarriages, child molestation, mental health, and domestic abuse seemed to be downplayed and twisted to meet the narrative. As someone who loves a woman who defeats all odds, this book is not that story, it pits women against women, overplays the narrative that only women are valuable when they have children, and uses mental health as a scapegoat. With this being said, after listening to an interview by her she discusses how she wrote each character in different ages and walks of life, which helped create a multi-faceted plot. She also explains how the book is utilized to showcase misogyny and a different viewpoint of polygamy. Overall, I would say that this is worth the read just to experience it.

The Wives had its' hooks in me up until the last 15 minutes. I was getting excited over dirty dishes simply because it meant I could sneak in a few extra minutes of this audiobook. Not a lot of audiobooks do that for me so kudos to the narrator and the author for telling the story so well.

That ending tho. I'm someone who has to reflect after finishing a book in order to see the big picture so at first I thought my disappointment with the ending was simply that it didn't play out the way I wanted. The more I sat and reflected, the more I realized that the ending leaves way too many loose ends to make sense.

Is a great book with an awful ending worth it? I don't know, but I look forward to reading more from this author (and listening more to this narrator).

• Recommended by a patron.
  
  A woman who is trapped in a polygamists relationship (Let me be clear - not a consensual polyamorous relationship. It is a polygamist relationship so it is controlling, toxic, and dominated by men/religion) She tries to out do the other women - but she starts to think how she got into this situation to begin with. Her view starts to change when her husband leaves a doctors note at her place with the name and address of the other wife.
  
  I was gripped by this for a long time. The author is really good and it really felt like our Thursday wife was having a break-thru about the controlling relationship she was in and how women shouldn't be collected in a very real way. She felt like a complete protagonist with flaws and realizations of her own...And I think that is why the ending disappointed me because it ends up she was crazy all along. I thought the book had some gaslighting that she would overcome OR maybe a women's dystopian (with reality elements)...I would say no. (I guess you could argue otherwise and I would listen to that. I did add it to the dystopian section of my bookshelves.)
  
  This book would probably be more of a two star for stringing me along for a lack-luster ending, but I'm not kidding you the writing connected so well with me I gave it an extra star because it did make it a likeable read. Pair with the audiobook narrator really did well too! I'd be interested in other books the author has for sure!

This is one of those novels where I felt that there was so much potential but it just didn't deliver in the way I was hoping it would. Right of the bat, I just felt off with reading this particular book and didn't realize the reasons until I was done with it. Even though I did enjoy it and I read it pretty quickly it was not one of those books where I couldn't put it down or couldn't wait to pick it back up again. I was curious to see what would happen in the plot but I wasn't dying to know either. It was neither here nor there for me, in regards to this novel.

The Wives is about a woman named Thursday, who is married to a polygamist but they have a rather unique setup where the wives all live apart and the husband comes to see them all separately one day a week, on their particularly scheduled days. Thursday starts to obsess about the other wives and as she digs to find out more info about who they are, she is thrust into a series of events that no one can see coming. The plot was unlike I've ever read before because this is my first novel about polygamy but whereas the first half of the novel drags a bit, the last half is too confusing and all over the place. I am still having a hard time processing exactly what the outcome of the story was. It had a promising start and premise but then veered of into something so completely out of the realm of possibility to me that I had a hard time connecting and relating to the story and the characters. Also, Thursday's relationship with Seth rubbed me the wrong way and since that was the foundation of the whole story, I was just not in this novel wholeheartedly.

Further on, the characterization was mediocre. It wasn't bad but it wasn't particularly good or memorable either. We got to see somewhat into the characters psyche but a lot of that was overshadowed by the turn the story took and nothing was the same ever again. The main relationship also didn't seem that genuine or believable to me, so that already got the book off to a bad start for me and then it just went downhill from there. The characters were somewhat two-dimensional but definitely did not pass into the realm of 3-D whatsoever.

Thirdly, the writing style was a bit confusing but not bad. There were sentences that were a bit hard to grasp fully and follow the full significance of. It didn't deter me from finishing the book but it definitely made the reading slightly less enjoyable. Also, some writing I found a bit too choppy.

In conclusion, even though I didn't hate this book, I also didn't love it. It sits in the middle for me when it comes to thriller novels. It's not going to be a book I will be recommending because it was just not entirely believable and the ending was confusing and anticlimactic at the most. There are so many great thrillers out there, I don't think you will be missing much by skipping this one.

Wth did I just read? A pretty normal response to psychological thrillers, to be fair. I started this book hating the main character, then I pitied her, then I kind of liked her acceptance of her own insanity. I don't know this story was wild. Is it polygamy or a psychotic break? A question I've never had to ask myself before. And the last paragraph, phew.

It wasn't what I thought it was going to be! I had heard good things about it, but not a book I would read again or buy for my book collection.

What a merry go round of beliefs and craziness... I guess a tad too swirling for me.

This book was a mystery, but it wasn't a thriller. There was nothing in this book that left you on the edge of your seat or biting your nails. The Wives was Gone Girl gone mad...mad in the way only the patriarchy can make women. This is a first-person narrative of a wife who is married to a polygamist. Depending on one's views on polygamy, you may empathize with the main character or loathe her. When the twist is revealed around 60-70 percent into the book, there is not enough tension built up to make the reader feel shocked. The twist elicits more of an eye roll because you read through 70 percent of the book just to find out our main character is an unreliable narrator. For me, the only mystery in this book was what really caused Thursday's descent into madness.

oh....my......goodness....what a wild ride with this one. The twists and the overall book was UH Mazing. I highly recommend if you are looking for a book with a good few plot twists. Was pretty suspenseful and couldn't put it down. I don't think I would reread because now that I've read fully through it would ruin the twists and turns but it was really really really good!

I know a lot people liked this and gave it rave reviews, but sadly I'm not one of them.

I really tried (I pushed myself to read atleast 40% of it!) but it just didn't do it for me! I found Thursday really annoying and I found it hard to believe that someone would willingly put themselves in the position she puts herself in. Her obsessive, stalkerish behaviour didn't help either.

Anyway, it's a no for me and I personally wouldn't recommend it to others.

Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read this book.

I started to read a romance about a mafia gang boss abducting a woman before DNFing it and reading this and I should've just read the romance.

The plot twists oddly reminded me of the way Riverdale is just doing weird unbelievable shit, the last half was just confusing. I mean, I didn't guess the ending, so thats a plus I guess.

This book is garbage.

CW: infertility, miscarriages (early and late-stage), gaslighting/emotional manipulation, emotional abuse, physical abuse, unnamed mental illness

So let's start here: I like stories of polygamy/polyamory. It's not a lifestyle I can imagine for myself, and I find it interesting to live in someone else's shoes for a little bit. I should have eaten The Wives up with a spoon.

The blurb is grossly misleading. That is not what this book is. You think you know what you're getting, but this book has more twists than a crazy-straw. I'm not sure how to review this without putting spoiler tags all over it, so be forewarned that Beyond This Point There Be Spoilers. (I want to promise that I'll try not to ruin it just for the hell of it, but the idea of someone else picking up this book ... I literally threw my copy across the room, then threw it in the recycle bin, so I make no promises.)

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Things I Hated:
• Mental illness as a twist - most of my problems with this book boiled down to this.
• Using the trauma of a late-stage miscarriage and birth, hemorrhage and subsequent loss of reproductive organs as the impetus for descent into madness.

Look, I'm not saying that it's impossible, but I reject this notion as the book's theme; it's no longer a book about polygamy at this point! Now it's about Thursday being crazy, and imagining all this shit? While Seth denies the plural marriage, even though he is literally sleeping with all three women despite only being married to one of them (and it's not the one you think)?????

Things I Hated, Cont'd:
• Convenient Memory Loss. About so. much. stuff.
• Seth. What an asshat.
• Regina emotionally manipulating Thursday into believing that Seth had intentionally aborted both Regina's and Thursday's pregnancies. And making Thursday fear that Seth would do the same to Hannah.

Ohhhhhh that made me RAGE. Like it's not traumatic enough to lose a baby more than halfway through a pregnancy, you're seriously going to introduce the idea that Seth intentionally killed multiple of his own children while they were still in the womb? At the risk of his wives? Knowing that Thursday is struggling to identify what's real and what's not??

Things I Hated, Cont'd 2:
• Regina. I mean, I get her hatred of Thursday, as the usurped first wife, but bitch! You don't do that.
• I stopped being sure that Seth actually existed at one point? Like, I couldn't keep it straight what the story was supposed to be. Did Thursday make up the marriage? The person? The other wives?
• Did I mention I hated the convenient memory loss???

I didn't even hate Thursday as the narrator, because I believed her for so much of this! (You gotta believe the women!) But even though Seth is supposed to be the one who was trying to get out of a bad/scary relationship with Thursday, he still comes off as the bad guy.

I got to the end and I was mad, and then I cried because of the way loss is portrayed and used as a manipulation tool, and then I was mad again, and then I couldn't sleep, so this is what you get.

Loved this book. I loved how the author made me think so many different things were going to happen - and then the twist at the end was totally unexpected! Definitely recommend if you like books that are fast paced and keep you on the edge of your seat.

I do not know how I'd rate this. If I'm honest, I would not recommend this novel to a friend. The plot was very convoluted and I'm just not entirely sure if the payoff was worth it in the end. The direction of the story wasn't my favorite.

However, I literally stayed up until 2am reading this and COULD NOT put the book down. So, I think rating it at 3 stars is the most fair.

This isn't a book I would ordinarily pick up, so I was surprised when I kind of loved it. It's not a hard read, nor is the writing so dumbed down that it bored me. It took me about a day to read it, but I found I didn't really want to put it down.

Will I read other Tarryn Fisher books? I don't know. Probably. This was entirely on a whim, it was on the new shelf at the library I work at and it just seemed to say “read me.” I'm glad I did. A lot of twists and turns, but not the sort that made me feel she had written them just for the sake of trying to make me feel like she was trying to trick me.

Solid book.

Here on GoodReads you can read a synopsis of the book so my reviews don't go into all that. There's a chance I'll say too much and spoil it for you so I'll just tell you what I thought about it. I hope that's copacetic enough for you.

I was so wrapped up in this story! I almost couldn't put my Book of the Month copy down and it sure got a little strange at the end so I dared myself not to. I just had to know what was going on! This one takes the reader down a spiral of ‘What just happened?' and you may not recover from it unless you're one who appreciates the storyteller. You find yourself wishing you had paid special attention to all the details. You begin to question every assumption you made because you just knew you had it all figured out and even if you did have a few things guessed right I'll bet you were still a good way off from what it's really about. It might even have ticked you off that you were wrong. That, my friend, is the clever artistry by which Tarryn Fisher weaves her stories. I am one of those readers who can't get enough of that. Here it is a month after I finished The Wives and I'm still thinking about it. Thanks for the ride, Tarryn!

I'm torn over what rating to give this. I don't usually read thrillers but Tarryn is one of my favorites so I gave it a shot. I was hoping for something along the lines of I Can Be a Better You and Marrow, with maybe a little hint of Mud Vein, but I felt this book was missing that special Tarryn spark. Perhaps it's because she wrote it intentionally for trade, it just didn't feel as fleshed out as her other books.

this was pure shit on pages haha

Thank you Edelweiss and Harper Collins for providing me with an arc for review!

I had such high hopes for this book. I absolutely adore thrillers. This definitely left me completely on the edge of my seat and I finished it within a single day.

However certain things just absolutely rubbed me the wrong way. There was a casually transphobic comment made pretty early on that just took me out of the story. I also couldn't connect to Thursday and her absolute fixation of how a perfect woman is supposed to be as well the expectations she envisions women having. A lot of that is just how her character is and it left me uneasy.

I appreciated this for how easy it was to read but I don't think I would do a re-read however.