#TBRChallenge 2021: The Secret Wife

The Book: The Secret Wife by Carrie Weaver

The Particulars: Contemporary romance, Book 1 in duet, Harlequin SuperRomance #1274, 2005, out of print, available digitally

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: It's a SuperRomance (I loved that line before Harlequin killed it) and the back cover blurb intrigued.  Other than that, I got nothing. While I have autobuy authors in my Harlequin TBR it's also chock-full of impulse grabs from conferences, used bookstores etc.

The Review: So it turns out that I read the second book in this duet for the 2012 TBR Challenge, a little factoid I had completely forgotten about until GoodReads reminded me. How time flies...and the memory fades.  Both books were published in 2005 - so it's only taken me 16 years to complete the series. Go Team Wendy!

Maggie McGuire is desperate. Her religious family disowned her when she moved in with Eric and even though they're married, they put the cart before the horse when son David was born. Eric is a race car driver working the circuit and Maggie is pinching pennies to raise their son and stay in school (to become a mortician - she has ambition to be a funeral home director some day....).  Worse still, Eric has been incommunicado. So Maggie does something rash - she packs her close-to-death Toyota and drives from Arizona to Arkansas with little David in tow. She's going to confront (OK, reunite) with Eric at a planned family reunion.

This book is honestly worth reading for the moment when Maggie charges into the family reunion.  Of course Eric isn't there (he's at the race track).  Instead it's his grandmother Edna, his half-brother, J.D. and....wait for it....Eric's wife, Nancy.  Yeah.  Turns out Eric is a bigamist.

J.D. is a fixer. He's not a McGuire by blood. His father died young and his mother ended up marrying Edna's son.  Eric was a product of that union.  For complicated reasons J.D. has been cleaning up after Eric since the kid was old enough to cause trouble.  Maggie isn't the first Other Woman to show up.  But she's so not Eric's usual type and she seems so....honest.  All J.D. knows is he has to defuse the situation until they can bring Eric to heel and sort out the mess.  Too bad Eric is found murdered before he can be confronted with his crimes.  Naturally Maggie is a prime suspect.

While there is a suspense thread moving the story forward, I wouldn't necessarily categorize this as  romantic suspense.  The focus on the crime isn't as dominant as the focus on the internal character baggage and the fallout of Eric's bigamy.  While Maggie was definitely naïve, falling for a silver-tongued devil, you can understand how it happened given her upbringing and past.  Nancy kind of gets the shaft early on in the story, but eventually the author brings her on page a bit more during the second half to pave the way for her future romance.

This story features a lot of things that can annoy me in contemporary romance, but somehow Weaver makes it work.  It's definitely a Biology Above All story - with J.D. feeling "less than" because he's "not a true McGuire."  Edna helped raise him, but she never reassures him, nor does she allow him to forget that Eric is the golden boy - never mind he's a colossal screw-up.  Honestly where Weaver dropped the ball a bit for me was the lack of scorched Earth on the part of J.D., Nancy and Maggie when it comes to Eric.  I get that being murdered is pretty final and the ultimate punishment but they were still way too forgiving in my opinion.  I'd be digging up his body to murder him all over again - but that's me.

Also, David is, of course, a miracle baby.  The question of paternity comes into play because it was believed Eric could not, medically speaking, father a child. As the reader, of course, we know Eric is the Daddy. Like, it's never a question. Maggie doesn't have it in her to lie about something like that!  Certainly it's a different spin on the typical Miracle Baby nonsense (it doesn't involve the perceived inability of the hero or heroine) but it's still a frackin' Miracle Baby.

The suspense thread is pretty decent until Weaver makes the mistake of tipping her hand too early.  As the reader we know Maggie and J.D. are innocent - so that leaves the list of suspects to about 3 people, or a random jilted lover / irate husband/boyfriend to do the deed.  But once that hand is tipped?  It's all over.  It was up to the romance to keep me invested - which, for the most part, it does.  Maggie grows a lot during this story, having had the wool pulled from her eyes, and having to reluctantly accept charity from J.D. with her pride in tatters. She's hung-up on making everyone see she's a good mother stemming from a niece who landed in the social services system and a troubled older sister who committed suicide.  This aspect of her past definitely could have been fleshed out more and feels more like a prop to explain Maggie's reaction to drama that comes into play later in the story than anything else.  J.D. has a White Knight Complex, but he's a good guy at heart who wants to do the right thing, and is conflicted over his attraction to Maggie.

It's been a while since I've unearthed a SuperRomance from my stash and while this one wasn't great, it was a good, solid read that kept me entertained.  I'm even half-tempted to go back and reread Nancy's story....

Final Grade = B-