The Wives

October 1, 2019
Marriage is hard enough without having to compete with two other wives in Fisher's (I Can Be a Better You, 2018, etc.) psychological thriller. Businessman Seth is married to three women. Well, he's actually only legally married to the narrator, a Seattle nurse he only sees on Thursdays. She calls the other two Monday and Tuesday since she doesn't know their names. They're polygamists, but Seth has no interest in a sister wife situation, and he's done a good job so far in keeping the three lives he leads, and the women he leads them with, separate. Until now. In fact, his Thursday wife is getting downright restless. She's tired of living only for Thursdays and is still haunted by the loss of a child. Though she truly believes she loves Seth, she frequently wonders how she lost herself so completely in such an unsatisfying and unbalanced marriage. When she finds a slip of paper with the name Hannah, who she believes is another of Seth's wives (the pregnant one, in fact), a whole new world of snooping opens up to her. She even goes so far as to set up a meeting with Hannah--without revealing her true identity, of course--and is alarmed to see that Hannah is hiding some bruises that look an awful lot like finger marks. What she subsequently discovers leads her down a rabbit hole of startling revelations, and the narrative takes a sharp left turn that would be shocking if most genre readers hadn't already seen similar twists before. It's all a bit over the top, but Fisher is a slick writer who keeps a tight rein on her lightning-fast plot, and the lengths that her feisty narrator goes to in order to reclaim her life make for salaciously satisfying reading. Derivative and shamelessly manipulative but still a lot of fun. Fisher is a writer to watch.

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October 21, 2019
Thursday
, the unreliable narrator of this engrossing psychological thriller set in the Pacific Northwest from Fisher (Folsom), tries to be the perfect wife for Seth
, her perfect husband. The only problem is her awareness—and seeming acceptance—of sharing Seth with two other wives who live in another city. Her carefully constructed world begins to unravel when Thursday finds out by chance the name of one wife, Hannah, who’s pregnant with Seth’s child. With an internet search just a few keystrokes away, Thursday gives in to the impulse to find out about Hannah and the other wife. Her discoveries open up the disturbing possibility that Seth is hiding a dangerous secret that could affect the life of his unborn child. She resolves to meet the other wives and to save Hannah. In doing so, she forms some surprising alliances. Fisher smoothly inserts moments of self-doubt, longing, paranoia, and triumph into her unsettling narrative as she draws the reader into Thursday’s conflicted and increasingly complicated life. Suspense fans will be rewarded. Agent: Jane Dystel, Dystel, Goderich & Bourret.

November 15, 2019
Thursday is in a polygamous relationship, the second of three wives of Seth, a builder who divides his time between his offices and wives in Seattle and Portland. A nurse who lives in Seattle, Thursday knows Seth's rules against snooping into the lives of the other wives (whom Seth calls Monday and Tuesday), both of whom live in Portland. But with just one night a week with Seth, jealousy gets the better of her, and she manages to identify and meet the others. Soon she's befriending number three, pregnant Hannah, who shows signs of physical abuse, and sharing sorrow about miscarriages with number one, high-powered lawyer Regina. When an argument with Seth turns physical, Thursday ends up in a hospital psych ward trying to determine what is real and what is not, fighting against the medications that keep her in a drugged state. An intriguing plot takes some sharp twists in the search for the elusive truth in this fast-reading domestic thriller.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2019

The protagonist in Fisher's latest novel puts up with something most of us couldn't stand: she gracefully accepts the fact that her husband has two other wives she doesn't know. Then she inadvertently meets and befriends one of them (revealing nothing about herself) and is shocked to notice that this wife is clearly being abused. And what about the third wife? Fisher has mostly self-published and also written a trilogy with the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Colleen Hoover; breakout time! With a 200,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 22, 2019

Fisher's latest (F*ck Marriage) has an intriguing premise: Thursday knows her husband, Seth, has two other wives. She is titillated by hearing about Seth's other relationships, although names are never revealed. But what happens when her curiosity gets the better of her, and she starts searching for the other women? The first half of the book takes us inside Thursday's mind, as she looks for her fellow wives and examines her own acceptance of her polygamous situation. She tries to understand the appeal of the other women so she can be the favorite. But it all breaks down in the second half when she's checked into a psychiatric hospital. This unsettling effect carries over to readers as the story flounders in details and sudden revelations and suffers from a violent ending that feels abrupt and unfinished. VERDICT This domestic suspense is recommended for fans of Louise Jensen's The Surrogate or Carol Goodman's The Other Mother. The language is edgy, but readers eager for a new thriller release will most likely snap this up.--Melanie Kindrachuk, Stratford P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.