The Younger Wife: More Family Drama, Less Mystery

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth
Genres: Family Drama, Mystery/Thriller
Pages: 346
Goodreads

THE HUSBAND
A heart surgeon at the top of his field, Stephen Aston is getting married again. But first he must divorce his current wife, even though she can no longer speak for herself.

THE DAUGHTERS
Tully and Rachel Aston look upon their father’s fiancée, Heather, as nothing but an interloper. Heather is younger than both of them. Clearly, she’s after their father’s money.

THE FORMER WIFE
With their mother in a precarious position, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family’s secrets, the new wife closing in, and who their father really is.

THE YOUNGER WIFE
Heather has secrets of her own. Will getting to the truth unleash the most dangerous impulses in all of them?

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This one is yet another book that is going to be rather difficult for me to rate. First off, I went into this a little blind. It was a book club pick, so I bought it without even reading the synopsis. What I gathered was that it was a thriller and, based on the title, I thought it was going to be about something nefarious with a younger wife.

In reality, this is more of a family drama than it is a thriller, and that’s the second reason this is hard to rate.

As a thriller, it wasn’t very good. The book somewhat follows two timelines in that it opens with a wedding. Someone at the wedding is injured – you don’t know who is injured, how they’re injured, or who injured them. It then goes back in time and follows the events leading up to the wedding. You follow the POV of the two adult daughters, Tully and Rachel, and their father’s young fiancé, Heather. Sprinkle in a mother with dementia, a water bottle full of cash, and their father’s mysterious past and you get a who-dun-it kind of mystery. Though, the buildup and reveal were rather lackluster. In fact, it leaves you with some unanswered questions even after the reveal.

On the other hand, if you read it as a family drama, it’s actually quite good. This story is more about the characters healing past traumas and the “mystery” is a bit of a catalyst to make that happen.  It’s incredibly hard to discuss this further without spoilers so I will just say that I enjoyed each of the POVs. Each of their personalities really shined through in Hepworth’s writing. Also, they all had very different issues and very different ways of coping with it, which I think will help the reader connect with at least one of them in some way.

As a bonus, there is a mild romance with a man named Darcy and I just loved those parts. He was lovely.

Overall, this is a middle of the stack book. If you go in thinking thriller, you’ll most likely be disappointed. If you go in thinking, family drama with a hint of mystery, you’ll probably enjoy it. I definitely recommend the audiobook as well. The narrator did a great job making sure each voice was unique which made it incredibly easy to follow along, even at 2x speed!