The Last Housewife: A Novel

Product Information

While in college in upstate New York, Shay Evans and her best friends met a captivating man who seduced them with a web of lies about the way the world works, bringing them under his thrall. By senior year, Shay and her friend Laurel were the only ones who managed to escape. Now, eight years later, Shay's built a new life in a tony Texas suburb. But when she hears the horrifying news of Laurel's death—delivered, of all ways, by her favorite true-crime podcast crusader—she begins to suspect that the past she thought she buried is still very much alive, and the predators more dangerous than ever. However, soon the novel started to be something else entirely. Once Marie has Nina’s life, she becomes immersed in solving the death of her ex-boyfriend, who died while he and Marie were on vacation years ago. Now, Marie is focused on finding the killer, and revealing the secrets of everyone in her new life. I felt like I was reading two different novels.

Of course there’s no chance for me to give this book less than five stars! This is one of the best thriller reads of the year I highly recommend it!My insides are rattling , my hands can’t seem to shaking . The Last Housewife, is not for the faint of heart . This book is fascinating, dark, deep, and like nothing I have ever read before . Aaaaaaahhhhh! Can you hear my shriek? If you didn’t, at least my entire neighborhood absolutely heard. The polite and old couple at next door super nicely advised me stop reading the most exciting parts of the book aloud and shut the freak out! ( of course they didn’t choose the freak word to emphasize their situation but I still think they are nice people! ) The Last Wife was a story that to me seemed to move at an incredibly slow pace which ended up for me a fight to hold my attention. It is also one you have a somewhat unlikable and unrealiable narrator so that didn’t help my enjoyment. It seemed to take forever to get passed the opening obsession with the late best friend and move to other things so in the end I felt this one only came in at 2 1/2 stars for me. The plot meanders all over the place forever and the ending makes no sense in any known universe. Marie and Camille end up killing Greg because he has guessed that Nina and Camille killed Charlie. Why in the world would Greg care so much about a man he SUSPECTED was murdered overseas 10 years ago, when the woman he SUSPECTED of killing him was also dead? Could he possibly prove that?

Have you ever been driving down a highway and then suddenly see a bad accident has taken place? You know you should look away and keep driving, but you don’t. You slow down and stare and take in whatever information you can get. Yeah well… that’s what this book was for me. I knew I should stop reading as some of the content was so disturbing, but I just couldn’t look away. Grace D. Li, The Washington Post "I barely breathed through most of this horrifyingly engrossing story, so consider yourself warned." The "mystery" of Charlie's death is solved about halfway through, but somehow the author keeps going over and over it, adding tiny, unimportant details and then having these new revelations throw Marie for a loop. The whole scenario of how Camille and Nina "accidentally" killed Charlie was really just dumb.Special thanks to NetGalley and HARLEQUIN/Graydon House for sharing this intriguing ARC in exchange my honest review.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review. The key element throughout the book is Marie's relationship with Nina, who was her best friend at school and art college. Marie is now a photographer, and her work forms an important ingredient to this novel. Marie is a clingy sort of person; jealous of anyone else, male or female, who becomes close to Nina. Following Nina’s marriage to Stuart, they soon have two children, but their happiness isn’t to last, when Nina is diagnosed with a terminal illness. The Last Wife takes us into our main character, Marie's head, after the death of her best friend, Nina, who had what Marie wants most. A tangled, messy, twisty web of obsession, jealousy, possession and secrets start to form. Being in Marie's head is intense, and her thoughts are a bit much at times. I wasn't sure how to feel about her, and, at times, I felt empathy for her, and she entertained me and other times I was rolling my eyes at her.

The plot is told mostly through telling rather than showing, which led me to feel disconnected from the characters. The book has hugely compelling characters and plot but what I loved most about it was the through-line of important feminist ideas. Really the book is not about a cult, but about our society, and the way many people (including powerful and famous ones) still believe men have to right to dominate women. The book also really skillfully explores why so many women not only participate in the domination but maybe also enjoy it, both sexually and emotionally. A difficult subject for sure but the book handles it extremely thoughtfully and always from a feminist perspective. In the process of reading about this philosophy in the cult, you'll bear witness to a lot of violence and horrible treatment of women, which is not easy. (But then again, if you live in this world and if you are a woman, you've already seen and experienced this yourself on a regular basis.) The content is disturbing and hard to read at times but for me the feminist perspective and the thoughtfulness with which it was presented actually made it an important read. I gave a lot of thought to issues I had never considered before in this way.