Dubbed as a psychological thriller, The Wife Stalker is about a woman fighting to hold onto the only family she's ever loved and the lengths she will go to save it.
Piper Reynard has relocated to the gorgeous seaside town of Westport, Connecticut and has just launched her wellness business. It is here where she meets Leo Drakos, a handsome and successful attorney. Piper finds everything about him attractive...except for his wedding band. But that isn't stopping her.
Joanna has been waiting for Leo to snap out of his severe depression and be the man that she fell in love with. When he starts to behave more like his old self, and becomes more attentive to Evie and Stelli—the children that they both adore—Joanna is thrilled. That is until she leans that she's not the reason for his happiness, someone else is.
Leo quickly falls for Piper, and leaves Joanna. She is devastated beyond measure and can't understand why this is happening. Determined to find a way back into her brood, Joanna starts looking into Piper's past. She is shocked to discover that Piper has not one, but two dead husbands. When she confides her fears for her ex-husband and children's safety to her therapist, Joanna is dismissed as being jealous and paranoid. But she won't stop until she find the proof that she needs in order to save her family.
I don't like to give negative reviews, however...not unlike The Last Time I Saw You, this one didn't do anything for me. The writing was amateur at best. There were little to no conjunctions or connecting words. Instead, the authors exhaust the reader with their short, choppy staccato sentences.
The characters were lacking in depth and were not developed. And the story itself was completely underwhelming. Often in thrillers, readers will need to suspend their disbelief. But in this book it was extreme and I just didn't buy in. Told to keep going because there was a great twist, I slogged through most of the book to get there. After all that, it wasn't worth it. The pacing was off and it was rushed.
Also, in Chapter 29, Piper is recounting running into Ava at a store a year and a half earlier. She gets flustered and sets the alarms off when she forgets to put back the handbag she was looking at. Ava remarks that she also steals husbands and calls her by her new name, Piper. This is incorrect. She would only know her as being Pamela—the woman that was married to her ex-husband—and not as Piper Reynard, her new identity.
For whatever reason, these authors struggle with pacing. There are situations that are completely glossed over, yet other mundane things like what they ate, are written with such detail. I would be interested to see if the same editor worked on all three books because these last two books could use a solid developmental edit.
All this being said, I have heard positive things about The Last Mrs. Parrish and would be willing to give that one a chance.
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LIV CONSTANTINE is the pen name of USA Today, Wall Street Journal, and international bestselling authors (and sisters) Lynne Constantine and Valerie Constantine. The duo write dark stories influenced by their Greek grandmother's tales.
