Okay, I won’t put any spoilers in this one like my previous Lisa Jewell book review, Then She Was Gone.
Synopsis
Everybody loves Maya, Adrian Wolfe’s third wife. The family holidays, the kids’ gestures of approval, the weekend-parenting shifts all showed a smooth-sailing ship on the sea of Adrian’s world. A world he once shared with two woman, who together bore his five kids. So if everything was so perfect, how does one explain Maya’s tragic death? Run over by a bus while intoxicated? Things just don’t add up. Adrian tries to put the pieces together. But as he does he sees that his world wasn’t quite constructed the way he thought. Unnerving truths begin to uncover themselves, buried emotions start to surface and the perfect unconventional family unravels into something not nearly so perfect after all.
If you’re a sucker for twisted family dramas then this is one for you. Lisa Jewell can snatch your attention like a hawk can snatch a chihuahua in an open field. Her writing style is clear, unstilted and sparkles with cheeky wit. Her characterisation is remarkable. The omniscient narrator, jumps with ease into the perspectives of each character, a writing style that I love. It’s used often in psychological thrillers to give ‘clarity’ ; build suspense; give a red herring; encourage sympathy; or to give the readers a little breather after a jaw-and-book-dropping discovery. I guarantee you, there were a lot of those.
Thoughts
Lisa Jewell’s thrillers (and I still wonder if they fall neatly into this category) are quite special in that they seem to have higher moral lessons threading through the narrative. In both the books I’ve read by her, her main characters seem to always undergo an ideological shift. Often they either realizing how they’ve acted selfishly and shutted out people in their life that really or they recognize that what they thought was right in the past was actually detrimentally scarring for others.
“Moving on isn’t something that you do. It’s something that happens to you. It isn’t proactive. It’s organic.”
-Lisa Jewell, The Third Wife
The Theme of Broken Families
With increasing divorce rates, the concept of family has shifted since about 50 years ago. Families are no longer the simple mom and dad, daughter and son but probably, mom, dad, stepmom , stepdad, half-brother, full-sister and stepbrother/sister. In 2021 statistics showed that in South Africa 4 out of 10 marriages will end before hitting the 10 year mark. It has become an increasing social norm and yet no matter how frequent it occurs…the damage it leaves remains the same: Kids always want to see their parents happy, but secretly, they want to see their parents together more. This book tackles this theme from so many angles with such depth and accuracy that I found my heart breaking at all the families that have been split apart no matter what the circumstance. I, for one, am a child of a split family but I am now old enough to see that I’d rather have had a happy mom to raise me than an unhappy one. And yet, I do know that getting married is something I (God-willing) will and can only do once. For the sake of my future kids. And for that you realize the importance of prioritizing others before yourself. Especially when you are a parent. So hey…that’s what life before parenthood is for. To figure out what you want and need.
And I think that’s where Adrian got it wrong. He was termed as being “addicted to love.” Yes, love is wonderful and love is so easy to find. But trust, reliability, self-assurance all forms part of a mature love that goes the longer mile. His desire to be ‘in-love ‘ made him lose sight of what he already had. His children, a life and home that he built. These were moving prompts of reflection for me.
All in all, I give this book a 3-star rating. I’m not a fan of the profanity that seemed to escalate throughout the pages (I think it’s a sad reflection of the contemporary times we live in). I think the plot was thankfully not as predictable as Then She Was gone. AND…it’s the first psychological thriller that actually moved me to almost shedding a few tears.
Have you read this book? If so, what did you think?
Discussion Questions (Comment your thoughts below)
- Who’s the homewrecker? The man/woman who cheated or the man/woman who they cheated with.
- Do you think divorce for lack of ‘being in love’ is worth it?
- Who do you think suffers the most in broken families?
- What is your experience being part of a split family?