A review by tangerinegem
The Third Wife by Lisa Jewell

mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I’ve never met a Lisa Jewell novel I didn’t like✨ If I’m ever in a book slump, I usually try to find one of hers on audio as a palette cleanser.

The Third Wife is a family mystery that follows the blended family of the patriarchal Adrian Wolfe. He has married and had children with two women, leaving them both and moving onto his third. Everyone in the family appears to be content with how life has turned out and the family even goes on holidays together. When the third wife is suddenly and unexpectedly killed, Adrian is left to wonder if it was really an accident. As he looks deeper into his third wife’s death a year after her passing, new details start to emerge.

As in most of her novels, Jewell weaves a tapestry of complex characters where the connections aren’t always apparent at first, and suspicion is thrown onto everyone. I particularly enjoyed the POV of a bumbling, slightly self-absorbed father who is forced through circumstance to take a critical look at the consequences of his own actions. The reader never quite knows how the story will end, or how it could end well, but she manages to create something that is oddly satisfying and a little cathartic in the end.