The Silent Wife on June, 2013 Pages: 326
Format: eBook
Goodreads
A chilling psychological thriller about a marriage, a way of life, and how far one woman will go to keep what is rightfully hers.
please note ~ the quote below is NOT a spoiler…..it’s from the first page!
In other words, she is deeply unaware that her life is now peaking, that her youthful resilience–which her twenty-year marriage to Todd Gilbert has been slowly eroding–is approaching a final stage of disintegration, that her notions about who she is and how she ought to conduct herself are far less stable than she supposes, given that a few short months are all it will take to make a killer out of her.
Jodi Brett and Todd Gilbert have been together twenty years ~ he’s a builder/contractor and she is an Adler-practicing psychologist. He is an habitual cheater. She in turn hides his keys. He knows that she knows. She knows that he always returns to her. But things change when he “falls in love” with the “much younger woman.”
Life has a way of taking its toll on the person you thought you were.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Silent Wife. Told in the alternating voices of Jodi and Todd, The Silent Wife takes us into the psyche of both characters. I was so impressed with the depth of Jodi’s character as a psychologist ~ Harrison did a superb job in researching Jung and Adler philosophies and methods of counseling. For someone who majored in psychology it was refreshing to see the portrayal as so fact-based.
Since finishing the novel I’ve thought long and hard about the plot, the ending, the choices each character made ~ while much of the novel was stereotypical in that the middle-aged man falls for much younger woman, falls in love and leaves the wife ~ the reactions to each change along the way and seeing it from inside the mind of Todd or Jodi helped to humanize the situation.
Monogamy wasn’t designed for men. Or men weren’t designed for monogamy. However you want to put it. Both things are true.” “You think so?” “I know so.”
A perfect book for book clubs or couples, this novel had me & my partner talking for a while about the nuances of each character ~ and that was just with me outlining the novel for him {he’s not a reader – I know! huge gasp!!} The Silent Wife raises all sorts of questions relevant in today’s society ~ do all men cheat? or as my darling bf says – “it takes a woman for a man to cheat with!” so is it a 50/50 thing? and what about Jodi, standing by silent for 20 years while Todd constantly had a fling on the side ~ was she right or wrong in hiding his keys, throwing out clothes, doing subtle things to get back at him though never confronting him ~ is that the norm for women with cheating husbands? And I love that Harrison had a psychologist as the wife ~ she’s the one who is supposed to be the saner of the two, the one trained to handle stressors in life and deal with everyone else’s stress. And with an ending worthy of Gone Girl, The Silent Wife is tops in my book for psychological suspense!
Have you read it? What were your thoughts?
Images by Artists Jennifer Gordan and Roman Sirotin, used with permission.
To participate in R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril or to find more spooky reads, please visit Stainless Steel Droppings.
Many thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Books for the complimentary review copy!
