The Wives by Tarryn Fisher has been HYPED all over #bookstagram and was even a December Book of the Month selection! I chose it for my January BOTM box and was super excited to dive into it.

The premise of this novel is wild from the get-go: a man has three wives, none of whom know anything about each other. One day, one of the wives — “Thursday” — learns a snippet about the identity of one of the other wives, and goes down a rabbit hole of information. Thursday realizes that her husband is maybe not quite who she thinks he is once she meets this other wife.

This book gave me whiplash. There was A LOT going on here. I realized about halfway through the novel that I genuinely didn’t know the main character’s real name. I was wondering if there were multiple narrators or multiple story lines going on. I was reading at a rapid-fire pace because I couldn’t wait to find out what the hell was going on.

The ending though — WHAT. I was SUPER invested in the first half of the novel, and then — it was just frustrating. I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but it was slightly problematic and unclear. I almost felt bad for the narrator and how lost & confused she was and how she clearly needed more support in her life that just wasn’t given to her.

I can’t give this book higher than a 3/5 star rating. It was well-written and fast-paced, but I can’t get past the WTFness of the ending.

TW: Mental Health & Domestic Violence