By Sara Steven
She has my husband. She has my child. She has my life.
I never thought I would end up here. Alone, in a cold one-bedroom apartment, only seeing my precious daughter once a week.
Another woman is living the life that was once mine. I wish I was still married to my ex-husband, the love of my life. I dream of tucking my five-year-old child into her ballerina bed sheets every night. I miss living in a beautiful house, the perfect family home, with a winding staircase and a sprawling garden.
I’d do anything to be with my family again. To start over and prove to them that I’ve changed, that I won’t lose control like before.
But when I get my second chance, the vicious messages come. The noises at night. The feeling of being watched. It’s happening all over again. I know I’m not going mad, but no one will believe me. I don’t know if I even believe myself.
All I wanted was my life back. But now my life is under threat – and my darling little girl is in danger…(Synopsis courtesy of Goodreads.)
Nicole Trope does something magical with her storytelling. It’s subtle and smooth, providing day-to-day insights for all of her characters, and while weaving tales that so many of us can easily slip into, she begins to add in suspenseful elements that gradually raises your blood pressure, putting your guard on high alert, until BAM! The unexpected happens.
That’s how I felt while reading His Other Wife. Sarah is the ex-wife, the reflective voice in the synopsis. Someone who has battled a lot after dealing with a terrible tragedy, often feeling as though she can’t seem to get over the past and all that she’s lost. It has manifested into hearing noises, especially at night–one voice in particular that continually haunts her. The way it’s written gave me chills. I can’t even imagine dealing with something like that, imagined or not.
Then you have Gideon, Sarah’s ex-husband, who is trying so hard to do all he can for Sarah and for their daughter, Emily. He wants to believe Sarah. He wants to trust in what she tells him, but everything she tells him seems so far-fetched and not real. Not to mention that Sarah could be potentially providing an unsafe environment for Emily.
Charlotte is the new wife who can’t help but feel insanely jealous about the relationship Gideon and Sarah still have and their bond with Emily. There are so many deep-seated reasons as to why she feels so strongly against Sarah, many that stem from her own past, with the constant feeling that she will never be enough for Gideon or for anyone, really. She doesn’t feel she’s allowed to be.
All of this blends together into an insanely psychological thriller–from the get go, I wanted to try and figure out on my own what would happen, who would be the culprit, or whether there really was a culprit at all. It was one of those experiences where you really can’t put the book down because you need all of the answers, and once discovered, you’ll end up shaking your head in disbelief. It was that good. I could not get enough of it–a definite five-star read!
Thanks to Bookouture for the book in exchange for an honest review.
Nicole Trope went to university to study Law but realised the error of her ways when she did very badly on her first law essay because-as her professor pointed out- 'It's not meant to be a story.' She studied teaching instead and used her holidays to work on her writing career and complete a Masters' degree in Children's Literature.
The idea for her first published novel, The Boy under the Table, was so scary that it took a year for her to find the courage to write the emotional story. She went on to publish a further five novels in Australia before joining Bookouture in 2019. She is a USA Today and Amazon bestseller in the USA, UK, AUS and CAN.
She lives in Sydney with her husband and three children.
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