In Three Single Wives, a fun wine-fueled book club turns deadly when a body is found. Could their discussion of cheating husbands and murder have paved the way? Everyone has secrets, and the four women at the book club have more than their fair share to hide. So who was killed and who really did it?
The premise of this book is intriguing, and it certainly grabbed my attention. I found the initial pages to be compelling, introducing the readers to each of the main characters in this murderous little drama. But then, it started dragging on, and I pretty much lost interest.
One problem for me is the writing style. It's overwritten, as a lot of psychological thrillers tend to be. It's heavy on the (melo)drama, going on and on with each person's thoughts and emotions, way past the point of necessity. I can grasp why a character is feeling a certain way, and I don't need it spelled out for me across paragraphs upon paragraphs. Less is more, you know? It feels like hardly anything happens, so every small event or feeling is stretched out into so many pages of text. I felt my attention wandering constantly.
The other problem is that a lot of the things that happen don't really make sense at all. For example, the court transcript is pretty much just the prosecution and defense accusing every single witness of being the murderer. Or, when a wife suspects her husband of cheating, she befriends the mistress because she feels bad. Or, when a friend's husband starts to blackmail a character, they remain BFF with that friend. I could go on, but most of the character's actions don't follow with their personalities or logic or even emotion. It just feels random.
I don't read a lot of psychological thrillers because I find most of them to be disappointing, and this one definitely falls in that category. None of the characters really gelled into real people with thoughts and actions that make sense. Not much actually happens in the story, but every ounce of meaning and drama is wrung out of every little action and emotion until all the suspense is gone. By the end, I hardly cared who was killed or who did it. I'm just happy to be done.
Readaroo Rating: 2 stars
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