My Lovely Wife is advertised as a domestic thriller about a married couple who murders to keep their marriage alive. It sounds interesting enough, so sign me up. Except what I got was mostly a domestic drama with no thrills. Boo hiss.
The majority of this book reads like a play of a typical suburban family, starring the couple and their two teenage kids. We are treated to page after page of them getting ready, going to work/school, coming home, cooking and eating dinner, watching tv, and going to sleep. There are lots of teenage drama, angst, rebellion, and technology use. It's all so pedestrian and boring.
This couple has real communication issues between them. Since the story is told from the husband's perspective and the wife does most of the murdering, it's all done off-screen, which means the husband (and we the readers) don't know the details. The husband is curious about what the wife is doing, but for some odd reason, doesn't just come out and ask her. Supposedly this couple murders to keep the spark alive in their relationship, yet the husband is too squeamish to know the details. It doesn't make any sense.
It's also not clear to me why they do this. The book makes some pretty far-fetched jumps to tie a backstory together, but it isn't convincing. In fact, none of the main characters' actions really gel into real people with coherent personalities. They are all rather one-dimensional, with the only distinguishing characteristics being that the parents murder for excitement and their kids go through teenage issues.
It's always a risk to tell a story from an antihero's perspective, and in order for it to be good, the reader has to be able to understand and connect with that person. Unfortunately, I didn't really feel anything from this story. I wasn't excited or thrilled or intrigued. I mostly just read to see what happens in the end, and when I got there, I didn't really feel anything either. Considering how awesome the premise was, it's a shame this book was a solid meh for me.
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