The Replacement Wife – Book Review

The first book review of the month of February!!

The #1 International bestselling author of Pretty Little Wife returns with another thrilling domestic suspense novel that asks, how many wives and girlfriends need to disappear before your family notices?

Elisa Wright is a mom and wife, living a nice, quiet life in a nice, quiet town. She’s also convinced her brother-in-law is a murderer. Josh has one dead wife and one missing fiancée, and though he grieved for them he starts dating someone new. Elisa fears for that woman’s safety, and she desperately wants to know what happened to her friend, Josh’s missing fiancée.

Searching for clues means investigating her own family. And she doesn’t like what she finds. A laptop filled with incriminating information. Other women.

But when Elisa becomes friends with Josh’s new girlfriend and starts to question things she thinks are true, Elisa wonders if the memories of a horrible incident a year ago have finally pushed her over the edge and Josh is really innocent. With so much at stake, Elisa fights off panic attacks and a strange illness. Is it a breakdown or something more? The race is on to get to the truth before another disappearance because there’s a killer in the family…or is there?

Content Warning:- Substance Abuse, Mental disorder

After reading her debut book, Pretty Little Wife by the same author, I was excited when I got hands to her second novel, the Replacement Wife. However, I hate to say, this book did not live up to my expectations and didn’t come close to Pretty Little Wife, which I devoured in one go.

Elisa Wright is a dutiful wife and mother. After a shooting incident that left Elisa traumatized, she gets suspicious of her brother-in-law Josh, when she discovered some messages exchanged between a person named “concerned” and Abby, Josh’s fiancee, who went missing after she starts receiving messages from the “concerned”. Josh has a dead wife, a missing fiancee and Elisa thinks her brother-in-law is a murderer. But when Josh brings in a new girlfriend and introduces to the family, Elisa must do whatever to prevent the same fate that Josh’s previous partners faced.

The plot was good–is Josh really a killer or whatever that are happening to his partners are a list of unfortunate incidents? Elisa also on the other hand is an unreliable narrator that you would think whether she is truly delusional about her brother-in-law or not. However, besides the plot being good, there were so much negative points about this book.

Too much repetition made me bored–everyone is talking about Elisa suffering from traumatization, Elisa’s obsession towards her brother-in-law to the point of stalking him was a bit too much for me. None of the characters in the book appealed to me. But nonetheless, I kept the book going, thinking ok maybe, I might find something intense and interesting. Even the part towards the ending got interesting but eventually, it was…well, I didn’t like the ending much. I was confused. If I outline my doubts about the ending, I might as well put in some spoilers but I decided simply to say…I didn’t like the ending. It was unbelievable, unrealistic and nothing like how Pretty Little Wife ended.

This wasn’t a fast paced thriller, not much twists and turns, too much repetitions that will make you bored. Worth 2.5 stars.