Review: The Replacement Wife

After reading Pretty Little Wife back in February I knew I was going to blow through the rest of Darby Kane's backlist - but I ain't gonna lie - I wasn't exactly looking forward to The Replacement Wife.  Anyone who has read any of my reviews for domestic suspense novels over the past handful of years knows that Wendy, she isn't the biggest fan of the unreliable narrator. The heroine who is gorked out on pills, booze, or more likely a combination of the two and we spend the entire novel trapped in her claustrophobic, paranoid mind.  I like Female Competency Porn in suspense novels and these gals running around half-cocked, not playing the smart hand, I just can't.  And while certainly, there's some of that in this book, Kane puts her own spin on this Trope That Won't Die making this one the most pleasant surprise in my reading year thus far.

Elisa Wright is a wife and mother living a quiet life in a historic home outside of Philadelphia.  There's just one small problem - Elisa is convinced that Josh, her brother-in-law, is a killer.  His wife died in a tragic home accident.  Nothing odd there necessarily, or so Elisa thought at first.  Then she introduced Josh to her good friend, Abby.  They started dating.  They got engaged. And now Abby has disappeared.  Poof! Without a trace.  Josh is playing the victim card. She LEFT him. Just decided she didn't want to be with him, packed up her bags and took off.  Abby is artistic, flighty, she's a grown woman and there's no evidence of foul play.  Except Elisa and Abby were friends - and Abby has dropped out of Elisa's life as well.  Which doesn't smell right to Elisa, especially since Abby knows about the trauma Elisa had recently suffered.  Abby would call to check in.  Abby wouldn't abandon a friend.  Except she does.  Then Elisa finds Abby's laptop hidden in Josh's home that has a string of incriminating chat messages saved on it and Josh announces that he's met someone new. He has a new girlfriend and he's head over heels in love...

Elisa is well on her way to unspooling at the start of the story, having discovered the laptop innocently enough while at Josh's house to bring in a cleaning service. Harris, Elisa's husband and Josh's older brother, took on the defacto parent role after their parents died when they were young. The Josh Needs To Be Taken Care Of party line is well ingrained, and after discovering the laptop, Elisa realizes how she fell into it lockstep. But all this means that there's the very real concern that Harris may side with Josh over his own wife.  Harris who likes calm and order.  Harris who just wants his wife to get better already and instead she has stopped therapy and when she manages to go out it's within a very limited range near home. Now she's convinced that Josh did something to Abby.

Kane sets up her unreliable narrator by having Elisa experience a traumatic event (content warning: work place shooting).  She's on anxiety meds, but as a reader I never got the impression that those meds were being used as an "excuse" for her unspooling (which, thank the Lord because I would have been irritated).  What has Elisa unraveling is the fact that she's not adequately addressing her trauma and that she's found the incriminating laptop in Josh's home.  One dead wife, a missing fiancé, and in a matter of months he's madly in love with a new girlfriend?  AND SHE'S THE ONLY ONE CONCERNED! It smells rotten and Harris, while he agrees it's quick, doesn't share the concerns on the same level as she does.  

Pretty much from the jump the reader knows that something is rotten about Josh. We also know that someone is seriously screwing with Elisa, gaslighting her, and making her come off as completely unreliable and unhinged.  And Elisa struggling is believable to the secondary characters because of the traumatic event she survived.  My main issue here is that Elisa does have all her faculties. She's not mixing multiple meds, she's not mixing her meds with booze.  Honestly I wanted her to be smarter. If someone is gaslighting you and making you look unhinged - Dear Lord don't fall right into their trap.  Pretend that everything is fine. Don't come off sounding unhinged. Don't argue that you're the victim even if you are.  It's just going to make people think you're nutso, and you have the well-being of your young son to think about. Don't give them any rope to hang you with that would put your son in danger.

So yeah, she's not the sharpest knife in the drawer and she frustrated me - but let me tell you that this book is Twisty AF.  Look, Josh is up to no good. We know this.  We don't know the extent of it, but something is definitely off with that guy.  It's the secondary players that send the reader on a ride in this one.  Who can Elisa trust? Does she have allies? Or are the people claiming to be her allies the ones gaslighting the hell out of her?  It's 400 pages of this and yes it is exhausting, but I could not put this down. I had to push forward. I had to find out how it all plays out. I had to find out if Josh was a killer, what happened to Abby, and it did not disappoint.

Were there things about this book that I didn't love? Yes, Elisa not playing things smart annoyed me.  But what did I love? How frickin' twisty this was! It kept me guessing from start to finish and when I came up for air I felt slightly drunk afterward.  A real treat for domestic suspense fans to be sure.

Final Grade = A