My Lovely Wife

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My Lovely Wife, the début novel from author Samantha Downing, is a wonderfully wild story sure to keep readers up way past their bedtimes.

Our narrator is a man who calls himself Tobias. We have no idea what his real name is, since he never tells us, so I just called him Tobias in my head. He’s been married to Millicent for over fifteen years, and they have two children, great jobs, and a nice house in the suburbs. They love each other deeply, but certain aspects of the relationship seem to have grown stale, and so the couple decides to take up a hobby in order to keep the spark alive. Unfortunately, their hobby doesn’t turn out to be something benign like dancing or wine-tasting. Instead, our protagonists decide to see if they can get away with murder.

When the story opens, two murders have already been successfully committed, and Tobias and Millicent are now in search of their third victim. They’ve developed a nearly foolproof plan to help them pick exactly the right victim and, of course, deflect suspicion away from themselves, but as so often happens, their plan changes midstream, plunging them into a web of danger and deceit they may not be able to escape.

I can’t tell you much more about the plot of the novel without ruining the fun you’ll have figuring things out on your own, but I can assure you this book is an absolute blast! I was horrified by what was going on, but I couldn’t make myself look away, because I so needed to see how things would turn out for Millicent and Tobias. There were even a few times I found myself cheering them on, even though I knew what they were doing was completely wrong. To me, that’s the mark of a great author!

The pacing is pretty close to perfect. The story starts off with a bang, and it doesn’t let up until you reach the end. There are some stellar twists that seemed to come out of nowhere, and each time I thought I had things figured out, they never went the way I expected them to go.

I went into the story not expecting to like Tobias and Millicent, but something about them was oddly compelling. They appear so normal until you dig deeper into their personalities, and then, all manner of darkness emerges. Since I love dark books, this was perfect for me, but YMMV.

If you love twisty thrillers with unreliable narrators, My Lovely Wife will be right up your alley. It’s the kind of book that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Instead, it’s content to be exactly what it is: an exploration of the darkest parts of the human mind.

Buy it at: Amazon/Apple Books/Barnes & Noble/Kobo

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Reviewed by Shannon Dyer

Grade: A-

Sensuality: Subtle

Review Date: 13/04/19

Publication Date: 03/2019

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Recent Comments …

  1. excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.

I'm Shannon from Michigan. I've been an avid reader all my life. I adore romance, psychological fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and the occasional memoir. I share my home with my life partner, two dogs, and a very feisty feline.

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Julie Robertson
Julie Robertson
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04/15/2019 6:54 am

Just after reading this review the book popped up on my amazon feed. As it was only 99p I splurged. I’m not normally a suspense reader but I couldn’t put this down. Finished it in a day without peeking at the end (bad habit of mine ). A great first novel, well paced, engrossing and hard to predict.

Lisa Fernandes
Lisa Fernandes
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04/13/2019 10:32 pm

I was intrigued by the descrip of this one; I’ll end up reading it soon, it looks like it packs a wallop!