This book was disturbing on many levels, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was easy to sympathize with the wife in this story even though it wasn't terribly easy to like her. There were lots of awful twists and turns, but I don't want to give anything away. I would definitely read another book by this author. ( )

I’ve read a bit about this author and was happy to get this book through my library quite quickly on reserve- love my library! Also, I can now return it and don’t have to have it on my shelves. I almost didn’t finish it as the main character was so simply unpleasant that her voice annoyed. Initially I was siding with her husband.
The book starts out in a confusing manner, with many changes of time setting and points of view but it settles into its pace about 80 pages in. It’s a domestic thriller, with an assembly of nasty and/or venal men, an unlikeable main character, and a decent female sleuth. Everyone is able to be bought, the women are all traumatized by men- well, you get the drift. Not the kind of world I like to imagine.
Still, the story roars right along and ties up to a true-crime podcast that reports in throughout the book. The main character is a lawyer and this knows about all sorts of techniques that stand her in good stead as suspicion flows around her.
It’s all quite highly improbable and unusually sordid and I suspect will be made into a movie one day very soon.
So bravo to the author, well-done, but I’m off to wash my eyeballs and read something a little less icky. A perfect fast read if you think all men deserve a quick kick. ( )

Pretty Little Wife (2020) by Darby Kane. Things just do not add up to make this a satisfying read. Lila was a lawyer in North Carolina when she met high school teacher Aaron. For reasons not clearly defined, they quit their jobs and move close to Ithaca, New York where Aaron grew up and also where his brother, Jared, still lives. Aaron has a new teaching position at the local high school and Lila gets her license (I assume) to sell real estate and she settles in at a local realtor’s office. Lila is the pretty little wife of the title, and while she is attractive, dresses well and treats her clients in a professional manner (usually) she is also distant from any semblance of emotions outside her marriage (usually), and is, though not specified as such, cool and aloof and not prone to engaging with neighbors.
The book opens with Lila discovering her husband’s “secret” cell phone with sex videos containing some of his students and him in at least one of them. Read that any way you like.
The phone is so secret that he uses the same passcode on both his phones, a passcode he gave to Lila, letting Lila “discover” his guilty pleasure. As Arron is stupid but not prone to violence, rather being a domestic terrorist of the verbal type, what can Lila do?
She is a smart ex-lawyer who worked at a large firm before Aaron came along. Using that background and her healthy respect for the law, there is only one thing she can do. As we find out about 85 pages into the story, she can kill him. Having done so, and having planned things out over several weeks, she decides to leave his car, him inside along with the evidence of his activities, at the school where he worked.
But the car and body go missing. The police get several calls about the missing teacher and when they confront Lila, she appears not to care about Arron being gone. Not at all.
A podcast reporting on three local missing women soon adds Aaron to the list. You would think that a podcast, wanting to add listeners, would come up with many theories as to what is happening but this podcast fails in that regard.
Things seem to spiral out of Lila’s control. Someone is leaving her notes taunting her and what she has done. We assume they are from the person who moved the car and body. Toss in Lila’s boyfriend who is a professor in the study of crime, reading and writing about murders, the high school princapal who is also Aaron’s best friend and perhaps very shady when it comes to the girls in his charge, and the suspect list grows.
What is off-putting about the entire story comes very near the end, with Lila’s confession that she knew who the real killer was all along yet allowed herself to be trapped by this person. Toss in Lila’s using and then discarding a hammer that the killer is about to use on her, and we wonder just how good a lawyer she was.
And the podcast lets us all down. With a dead and missing husband and a wife who totally appears to care less about him, and who is having an affair while all this is going on, why wouldn’t the podcasters raise the theory that it was a husband and wife team doing the sex videos, abducting young women and killing the latter. When hubby decides to drop the wife, she decides to drop him permanently. Nice theory.
And the actual killer should have been someone else in the book. I can think of at least one person who checks all the boxes offered as to the killer’s identity, and yet is never under suspicion at any point.
All the men, except Lila’s lawyer friend Tobias who is getting married to a swell guy back in N.C., range from being unfaithful to lying cheaters to glory hogs with only political ambitions on their minds. It almost feels as if the author has a distorted view of the world that manages to come out in her writing.
This book could have been so much better with a far different ending, but it lamed out on us and so I can only give it a weak 2 stars, if not less. ( )

Storyline was okay, just never got invested in the characters. ( )

This story gave so much insight to the events in book one. It is Jack and Jill beginnings, and amplifies the terror in the events of [b:Every Heart a Doorway|25526296|Every Heart a Doorway (Wayward Children #1)|Seanan McGuire|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1431438555l/25526296._SX50_.jpg|45313140].

It's a magically tragic tale of twin sisters told so poetically, I felt every heart beat of the characters. The story is woven together with all the elements that made me fall in love with the first book, and I'm excited at the prospect of the books to come.

While the worlds were only described in Every Heart, this book gives a deep look into the world they discover, telling us the innerworkings of the places/people, and law of the lands. Reading the childhood of Jack and Jill, followed by their teen years gave me chills to what became of them. It also gives so much depth to the idea of identical twins, and the done like world some people live in. My heart broke for Jack all over again.

Like with the first, this installment layers in more social commentary, and I'm here for it.

I also just realized the author is the narrator and wow. That made it more magical. I was going to rave about the narration, but it makes so much sense, all the emotion behind the words. A must listen, if you're able.

If you love [b:The Ten Thousand Doors of January|43521657|The Ten Thousand Doors of January|Alix E. Harrow|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1548174710l/43521657._SY75_.jpg|63516505] or [b:The Starless Sea|43575115|The Starless Sea|Erin Morgenstern|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1554996038l/43575115._SY75_.jpg|66444785] you're going to LOVE this book. Has the same whimsical fantasy air about it.

Note: LGBT ( )