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A review by hayleysellick
The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison
1.0
I am so disappointed with this book. It was recommended to me, which is the only reason I felt obliged to finish it, but I personally could never recommend this book to anyone. I’m not usually one to put spoilers in a review but I just have to explain why this book was so terrible.
The book is centred around Jodi and Todd, a married couple. Todd is a serial cheater. Jodi is a psychologist and lives in denial. Todd has an affair with his best friend’s daughter Natasha and gets her pregnant.
In the blurb, it basically says Jodi is going to kill Todd. Firstly, she doesn’t even kill him. She doesn’t even plan it. She just pays someone else to do it. It wasn’t until page 304/369 that he actually died. I expected the first part of the book to be a short introduction into the characters, Jodi’s motive, the murder, then the case. Nope. 304 pages of Todd having an affair, getting Natasha pregnant, moving out of his house with Jodi and into a house with Natasha, planning a wedding, trying to evict Jodi, potentially about to start another affair then finally dying. Even the death was boring. Jodi’s friend is all “hey we should kill him, give me some money and I’ll sort it out, k?”. So she gives her friend the money then some guys pull up in a car next to Todd and shoot him. His whole murder takes less than a page and these are physically small pages.
Then starts the murder case. I finally thought “okay, here we go” when the detectives start asking Jodi lots of questions. But then they come back and say “jk, we don’t think it was you anymore, we arrested Natasha’s dad, the end”. Like, what? There’s barely any evidence it was him. Jodi can’t get hold of her friend, so she thinks her friend has taken the money and run. Does she try to find out? Nope. Does she do a Jean Valjean from Les Misérables and confess when she hears someone else has been arrested? Nope. Does this damn woman do anything at all? NO SHE DOES NOT.
Throughout the book, there are an abundance of side storylines. Todd has a HIV scare, which is a major deal in the book. After he dies, it turns out he doesn’t have it! What was the point of this storyline? Another one is Jodi’s conversation with her psychology mentor, in which she talks about her family. It’s such a dull conversation that I didn’t even feel there was going to be a storyline around it. But surprise! Four pages from the end of the book, she alludes to the fact her older brother molested her. Again, why put that in? It seems like a last ditch attempt to add some shock to this boring book.
Speaking of the ending... good lord. The last page. The book just... ends. It feels like it cuts off in the middle of a paragraph and I was left confused.
The front of the book says it’s going to be made into a movie and honestly I cannot see that happening. This is a book I will never reread in my life. It’s not a long book, it’s broken into lots of short chapters and I could only bear to read a few pages at a time because it was so dull. I felt disappointed every time I picked the book up because I didn’t want to read it but also I wanted to get rid of it off my shelf and out of my house.
Spoiler
The book is centred around Jodi and Todd, a married couple. Todd is a serial cheater. Jodi is a psychologist and lives in denial. Todd has an affair with his best friend’s daughter Natasha and gets her pregnant.
In the blurb, it basically says Jodi is going to kill Todd. Firstly, she doesn’t even kill him. She doesn’t even plan it. She just pays someone else to do it. It wasn’t until page 304/369 that he actually died. I expected the first part of the book to be a short introduction into the characters, Jodi’s motive, the murder, then the case. Nope. 304 pages of Todd having an affair, getting Natasha pregnant, moving out of his house with Jodi and into a house with Natasha, planning a wedding, trying to evict Jodi, potentially about to start another affair then finally dying. Even the death was boring. Jodi’s friend is all “hey we should kill him, give me some money and I’ll sort it out, k?”. So she gives her friend the money then some guys pull up in a car next to Todd and shoot him. His whole murder takes less than a page and these are physically small pages.
Then starts the murder case. I finally thought “okay, here we go” when the detectives start asking Jodi lots of questions. But then they come back and say “jk, we don’t think it was you anymore, we arrested Natasha’s dad, the end”. Like, what? There’s barely any evidence it was him. Jodi can’t get hold of her friend, so she thinks her friend has taken the money and run. Does she try to find out? Nope. Does she do a Jean Valjean from Les Misérables and confess when she hears someone else has been arrested? Nope. Does this damn woman do anything at all? NO SHE DOES NOT.
Throughout the book, there are an abundance of side storylines. Todd has a HIV scare, which is a major deal in the book. After he dies, it turns out he doesn’t have it! What was the point of this storyline? Another one is Jodi’s conversation with her psychology mentor, in which she talks about her family. It’s such a dull conversation that I didn’t even feel there was going to be a storyline around it. But surprise! Four pages from the end of the book, she alludes to the fact her older brother molested her. Again, why put that in? It seems like a last ditch attempt to add some shock to this boring book.
Speaking of the ending... good lord. The last page. The book just... ends. It feels like it cuts off in the middle of a paragraph and I was left confused.
The front of the book says it’s going to be made into a movie and honestly I cannot see that happening. This is a book I will never reread in my life. It’s not a long book, it’s broken into lots of short chapters and I could only bear to read a few pages at a time because it was so dull. I felt disappointed every time I picked the book up because I didn’t want to read it but also I wanted to get rid of it off my shelf and out of my house.