Novel: My Lovely Wife
Author: Samantha Downing
Format: Audiobook
Source: OC Public Library
Rating: 4/5
My Lovely Wife By Samantha Downing
Summary
Dexter meets Mr. and Mrs. Smith in this wildly compulsive debut thriller about a couple whose fifteen-year marriage has finally gotten too interesting…
Our love story is simple. I met a gorgeous woman. We fell in love. We had kids. We moved to the suburbs. We told each other our biggest dreams, and our darkest secrets. And then we got bored.
We look like a normal couple. We’re your neighbors, the parents of your kid’s friend, the acquaintances you keep meaning to get dinner with.
We all have secrets to keeping a marriage alive.
Ours just happens to be getting away with murder.
Source: goodreads
Why did I choose this book?
All through 2019, I could only listen or read few books. I was parched for a good book and didn’t want to wait for the ones I wanted to listen or read. One night after putting my baby to sleep, I opened Overdrive app and put on the filter for available audiobooks. And I had to again put a filter for thrillers and mysteries. This was the first one that came on the list. On reading the synopsis, I was intrigued. After checking this one on goodreads, I downloaded and started listening.
My Thoughts
**spoilers ahead**
The story begins with the husband cheating on his wife with one of their potential victims. He has a one night stand with her. Then comes home to tell his wife that she isn’t their next victim without any reason. It was odd at that time because the story was just beginning. And it also made me sympathetic towards the oblivious wife.
Anyways, after first few chapters, one thing was clear that the couple had dual lives. One was that of parents and the other was of being serial killers! They were able to manage both of them quite well. After putting their kids to bed, they plotted about their next murder.
Halfway through the novel, the husband explained how they came to be on this murderous journey. It was to save his wife and their family. He also explained why they continued killing now when there was no one to save. I believe for the husband, the incentive were to kill the boredom, save themselves from police and impress his wife. And for the wife, killing and tormenting was a medium to vent out her sociopathic urges.
What do you think their kids were doing while they were kidnapping and killing? The kids were either at school or with babysitters.
I felt sad for the daughter who was clearly being used by her own mother as a scapegoat to keep her husband occupied and away so that she could satisfy her sociopathic urges. There were times I felt angry towards the father for being too slow and not understanding what her wife was doing to their daughter. I also didn’t like the way he let his son blackmail him. He had his doubts about his wife poisoning his daughter, but he didn’t act on them until the point when it was too late.
Both the husband and wife loved their kids. And kept on reassuring themselves that all will be well in the end. I think the mother justified the poisoning the food of her daughter and husband to make them sick using two reasons. First, doing this gave her time devoid of distractions to torment and kill those people, an activity she enjoyed. Two, she was deluding herself that her actions are justified as she was taking revenge on her lying and cheating husband.
Even with all this drama and negativity, the novel’s pace kept me on my toes. Yes, there were patches in between that would put me to sleep. But, I almost always wanted to know what happens next in the life of this couple. Are they going to get caught, if yes, how? What is the next step the couple is going to take? Towards the end, I couldn’t hit the pause button and go to sleep, I wanted to know what the husband is going to do now when he knows his wife is the sociopath serial killer.
I was able to deduce that definitely something is wrong with the wife based on husband’s reference to her temper and anecdotes from their past quite early. But that didn’t prepare me for the extent to which she was evil in the end.
This novel does have similarities to the series Dexter. There are references to the torture done to girls and a theme of copycat serial killer. If you enjoyed watching Dexter, and love a mystery novel with similar kind of twists and turns, you would definitely enjoy this one.
Overall, I enjoyed this novel and thus gave it a rating of 4. Not 5, because it got boring sometimes in the middle.
