The Wife Between Us
by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen
GENRE: Mainstream Fiction, Thriller
When Nellie marries Richard, a handsome and rich hedge fund manager, she will get all of the security and love she longs for and needs. The only downside is Richard’s obsessed ex-wife, Vanessa, whose younger self eerily resembles Nellie. The reader should assume nothing!
Author Biography
SARAH PEKKANEN is the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of several novels of suspense including An Anonymous Girl and The Wife Between Us, and the internationally and USA Today bestselling author of over half a dozen solo novels. A former investigative journalist and award-winning feature writer, her work has been published in numerous national magazines and newspapers. She lives just outside of Washington, D.C. with her family. - Macmillan Publishers
GREER HENDRICKS is the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of The Wife Between Us, An Anonymous Girl, You Are Not Alone and The Golden Couple (3.8.22). The Wife Between Us has been optioned for film by Amblin Entertainment, with Greer and her co-author, Sarah Pekkanen, hired to write the screenplay. An Anonymous Girl and You Are Not Alone have been optioned for television, with Greer and Sarah tapped to executive produce. Prior to becoming a novelist, Greer served as Vice President and Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Allure, Publishers Weekly and other publications. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children. - Author's website
More titles by Sarah Pekkanen and Greer Hendricks.
Kirkus Reviews
An angry ex-wife is stalking a young, innocent fiancée who is a carbon copy of her former self…or so it seems. The use of a multiviewpoint, chronologically complex narrative to create suspense by purposely misleading the reader is a really, really popular device. Two words: Gone Girl. While we are not the fools we once were and now assume immediately that we are being played, the question is whether we still take pleasure in the twists and revelations that follow. Pekkanen (The Perfect Neighbors, 2016, etc.) and Hendricks' debut collaboration falls into the first wife/second wife subgenre of this type of story (e.g., The Girl Before, The Last Mrs. Parrish). In all of these, an unbelievably handsome, wildly successful, secretive, rigid, orderly, and controlling husband—here it's Richard, a 36-year-old hedge fund manager with "a runner's wiry build and an easy smile that belied his intense navy-blue eyes"—marries the same type of woman more than once, sometimes more than twice. Of course, he's not who he seems. Perhaps the female characters are not, either. Here, we meet Nellie, an adorable New York preschool teacher who is not quite sure she wants to give up the fun, shoestring, highly social lifestyle she shares with her roomie to move to a sterile suburb with Richard. But the wedding date—of course he hasn't even told her the location, just "buy a new bikini"—draws ever closer. Something bad happened to Nellie in Florida a long time ago that has made her anxious and hypervigilant. Meanwhile, Vanessa, the spurned wife, lives with her artist Aunt Charlotte (a great character), is boozing heavily, and is about to lose her job at Saks. She's stalking Nellie, determined to prevent the marriage at all costs. Since you know there's got to be more to it than this, the fun is in trying to figure it out before they tell you. We didn't! One of the subplots, the one about the bad thing in Florida, was fresher than the main plot—maybe Hendricks and Pekkanen should have written a whole book about that. Easy to read, smoothly put together. A good airport book. (Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2017).
Publisher's Weekly
Hendricks, who spent more than 20 years as a book editor, joins forces with Pekkanen (The Best of Us) to create a jaw-dropping psychological thriller. Unreliable narrator Vanessa Thompson is obsessed with her ex-husband’s fiancée and on the verge of becoming unhinged. She gave up everything to have a fairy tale life in Westchester with too-good-to-be-true hedge fund manager Richard. After a series of failed fertility treatments, their marriage unraveled, and Richard leaves her for a younger woman. Hendricks and Pekkanen chronicle a marriage gone wrong through the alternating accounts of the shattered Vanessa and a vibrant, younger woman named Nellie. This is not another eye-rolling story about the jealous ex-wife stalking her replacement, as readers will discover as Vanessa’s motivations are revealed. Unforgettable twists lead to shocking revelations all the way through the epilogue. 250,000-copy announced first printing. Agent: Victoria Sanders, Victoria Sanders and Associates. (Jan.).
Behind Closed Doors
by B.A. Paris
The friends of a seemingly perfect socialite couple begin to see cracks in the facade when they realize that the husband and wife are never apart and that there are bars on one of their upstairs windows.
Best Day Ever
by Kaira Rouda
Paul Strom has the perfect life: a glittering career as an advertising executive, a beautiful wife, two healthy boys and a big house in a wealthy suburb. And he's the perfect husband: breadwinner, protector, provider. That's why he's planned a romantic weekend for his wife, Mia, at their lake house, just the two of them. And he's promised today will be the best day ever.
Gone Girl
by Gillian Flynn
When beautiful Amy Dunne disappears from her Missouri home, it looks as if her husband Nick is to blame. But though he protests his innocence, it's clear that he's not being entirely truthful. Gone Girl is not only the story of a disappearance, but a truly frightening glimpse of a souring marriage.
