#REVIEW - The Third Wife by Lisa Jewel

DESCRIPTION:

For fans of Liane Moriarty and Jojo Moyes comes a riveting family drama with a dark mystery at its core, from the internationally bestselling author of The House We Grew Up In (which I absolutely  LOVED!)

In the early hours of a summer morning, a young woman steps into the path of an oncoming bus. A tragic accident? Or suicide?

At the center of this puzzle is Adrian Wolfe, a successful architect and grief-stricken widower, who, a year after his third wife’s death, begins to investigate the cause. As Adrian looks back on their brief but seemingly happy marriage, disturbing secrets begin to surface. The divorces from his two previous wives had been amicable, or so it seemed; his children, all five of them, were resilient as ever, or so he thought. But something, or someone, must have pushed Maya over the edge…

With psychological nuance that gets into the heart of its characters, The Third Wife is a gripping story about a man seeking the truth behind his seemingly perfect marriage and the broken pieces left behind.

MY TAKE:
3 STARS!

Adrian met, dated, and fell in love with Susie. They married, and this is both of their first marriages. They had a family of two children . . . Next . . .

Adrian met a woman named Caroline. He had an affair with her, and fell in love with Caroline.  Adrian divorces Susie, his first wife, along with his two children, and he marries Caroline. This was Caroline’s first marriage, and now Adrian’s second. They have three children together . . . Next . . .

Adrian meets and falls in love with Maya, divorces Caroline, his second wife along with his second family of three children, and now he marries Maya, his third wife. They were trying to have a family, too, until a bus runs her over.

The police tell Adrian that this is either an accident or a suicide. A suicide? Maya was so happy, or wasn’t she? No. This could not be a suicide. It had to be an accident.  

Now Adrian has no wife, two ex-wives and the five kids from his previous two marriages. Adrian tries to spend more time with his kids,

Adrian is also left with Maya’s cat named Billie. Does he want to keep this cat or get rid of it? Adrian has never been a cat lover, so he puts an ad out to see if anyone is interested in adopting the cat. This is when we meet June, a very mysterious woman who no one knows, and she decides to ‘date’ Billie the cat to see if they are a good match before she commits to adopting him.

This mysterious woman, June, plants a seed in Adrian’s head that perhaps Maya’s death was not accident or a suicide, but possibly a murder. A murder? What? Who? How? Everyone gets along so well in this large family that he just does not understand how this could possibly be a murder? Or, was it a murder? There were some things that could possibly point to murder, and Adrian knew her death could not be a suicide, but then again finds out Maya had a secret that he never would have guessed. For one thing, he blood alcohol content was more than double than what she would normally drink. This is the trigger that gets Adrian to look further into Maya’s life to learn more about what really happened. What was women’s fiction has now turned into a thriller of a story.

What really happened, and can Adrian find out the truth?

I LOVE Lisa Jewel’s writing, but I was a little disappointed with the writing in this book. It is so different than the other two books I have read by her. I have read After the Party and The House We Grew Up In and I loved both books, but the second book I really loved. Comparing that second book to this book, we see a lot of family interaction.

Lisa Jewel’s writing is getting much stronger in regard to family interaction, and that was nice to see it getting so much stronger, but what had me disappointed with this book was the length. I felt it got boring at times. I also lost my interest several times, and I felt this book could have been edited down quite a bit. I got tired of reading it at times, and I did not want that to be happening. I also had to force myself to keep reading this one. Just think, I almost put this one down and never would have found out what really happened! I could have missed the most important part! The longest part was from the start to halfway through, and perhaps a tad longer to about the 60% mark. (I read the egalley.) That really is quite a lot.

Adrian did learn a lot about himself because of Maya’s death, that he learned he really needs to grow up, really focus on settling down and growing up in that way. He does not want to keep repeating the mistakes he has already made. Maybe I just didn’t like him so much because of his history with women? There is a LOT of it.

The book was just too long in places to hold a newbie to Lisa Jewel’s writing. It needed to hold their complete attention, and I feel it lost it in several places. I want people to see how great of a writer she really is and how much she has grown in her writing, too, so I didn’t want to see people lose their interest in this book. I kept on and was happy I did.

There is a Reader’s Guide in the back, and it really asks some great questions for yourself or even for a Book Club.

I received this book from the Publisher, Atria, through NetGalley. Thank you!