Reviews with content warning for Suicide - Advika and the Hollywood Wives

If you read this as a silly, boppy, summer beach read, then it's decent. If you're looking for more than that, it doesn't really deliver. I will, however, counter what other reviewers are saying with regards to Advika and Julian - I can definitely imagine someone in their mid-20s marrying someone 40 years older, that doesn't seem unreasonable, even if it's after a quick whirlwind romance.

However, I do agree that the rest of the plot kind of got lost with the lack of further relationship development - problems starting immediately after Advika married Julian is what really made it hard to care about the rest of the book. If it had been a longer fairytale romance period, I think the rest of the book would have been more impactful.

I loved the idea of the other wives and Advika uncovering their stories - however, the total disappearance of an entire wife from the timeline and failure to really talk about that kind of threw me off, as well as just feeling like Advika really should have acted sooner. She was set up for success and took so long to make her decisions. It also felt like the side characters were more interesting than Advika and yet they only appeared occasionally. I wish we'd seen more of Olive and the Oakies - they were too interesting to be shoved aside.

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daffodilcherry's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I was absolutely hooked by this book, and read it in two days! This tale is almost a modern Bluebeard retelling, where Advika falls for rich, charming, powerful Julian and is told not to look into his past wives. I liked the clever way the red flags about Julian were woven into the start of the story, and how Advika is presented as a flawed, but understandable protagonist. I loved Advika's friends and the supporting cast! I'd love to see this novel optioned for a movie or limited series!
Wheelhouses: Hollywood glamour, toxic relationship, Bluebeard retelling, woman uncovering the truth, friends caring for each other, people in their mid 20s still trying to find themselves.

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klinbenson's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I liked this book much more than other people who wrote reviews. I didn’t find it lighthearted at ALL—the POV character is deeply unhappy, guilty, and grieving for a lot the book. When she falls for a kind of fairytale that ends up being not what it seems, it felt extremely on brand for the kinds of decisions that people make to avoid dealing with their actual problems. I don’t think that Advika is naive. I think she is a young woman, a child of immigrants who hasn’t adhered to the kinds of dreams they want her to have, who is grieving the death of her twin and the ways she feels she could have prevented it, and gets a kind of fairytale meet cute wirh a rich, much older producer. He has charm (even if the reader and her friends see through it,, haven’t we all made this mistake at least once?), money, fame, and he’s doing the thing she desperately wants to do—make movies. I thought the author did a great job of writing from this POV so that the reader often feels as disconcerted as the character herself does.

My favorite part was the way that finding out about her husband’s previous wives not only brought her into her own power, but back into relationship with the people who do actually care about her. The end of the book and the epilogue were a little soap opera-y, but I didn’t mind that.

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chelseylb1988's review against another edition

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challenging hopeful medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.5

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