The #Sexy #Nerd #Review...The Younger Wife...#Netgalley #TheYoungerWife #Thriller #Suspense #Mystery

THE HUSBAND

A heart surgeon at the top of his field, Stephen Aston is getting married again. But first he must divorce his current wife, even though she can no longer speak for herself.

THE DAUGHTERS

Tully and Rachel Aston look upon their father’s fiancée, Heather, as nothing but an interloper. Heather is younger than both of them. Clearly, she’s after their father’s money.

THE FORMER WIFE

With their mother in a precarious position, Tully and Rachel are determined to get to the truth about their family’s secrets, the new wife closing in, and who their father really is.

THE YOUNGER WIFE

Heather has secrets of her own. Will getting to the truth unleash the most dangerous impulses in all of them?

The Sexy Nerd's Review...

I’m definitely a Hepworth fan. Oh yes indeed! But, unfortunately, I’m not quite sure how I feel about her latest installment. I didn’t dislike it and I didn’t quite like it. Suffice it to say, I believe I’m on that dreaded cyclone fence once again. What is a reader to do?

Let’s delve into what I enjoyed about this story. Hepworth always brings the mystery to her stories. Tully and Rachel were dynamic characters dealing with real life family dysfunction at its finest. Dealing with a mother diagnosed with dementia and a father who is about to marry his newest fiancé and having their own skeletons in their closets. Tully has a way of “finding” things in her purse, under her shirt, stuck in her bra and Lord knows where else and not quite “sure” how they got there? Her husband is a well-respected lawyer and they’re living the dream that is until her husband comes home and tells her something that will shake their marriage to the core.

Rachel is the beautiful sister. She’s always receiving compliments and men gawking at her trying to press up on her and get in her space. She runs a very successful bakery and in the market for a new delivery employee. When she finds the employee she’s searching for, she got much more than she bargained.

Stephen, the father, the ever-wonderful good doctor who would do anything for his family. He’s distraught over having to put his wife in a nursing home to take care of her dementia problem—all the while, he’s divorcing Pam, the current wife, is totally unaware. Humph, that doesn’t stop Stephen. In fact, he has a much newer model he’s about to marry, Heather Wisher. Oh my, good old Heather. She certainly didn’t come to the table without her own bag of heavy issues. Like I said this family has a little bit of everything going on and it isn’t any wonder how any of them will survive it. This is what I love about a Hepworth story. She gives you a whole lot of little stories that melt together into one big picture.

Ok, so here’s where the disconnect comes in for me. Because I will not give any spoilers (it’s not my style), there are questions I have and can’t ask without giving away the entire story. What I didn’t like is the fact that I’m not quite sure where the mystery was? Every scenario I played in my mind didn’t come to fruition. That’s quite all right, that happens sometimes, but I felt the story could have been much darker or it appeared as if Hepworth was going for a darker story but at the last minute decided she didn’t want to do it, perhaps? I kept thinking she was going to go in a place I wasn’t sure readers would have been ready for and then she snatched the possibility away, almost like taking candy from a child. Ummph! That just got to me because I wanted her to really go there.

Hence, therein lies the problem. The ending left me with many questions and although she cleared up one huge mystery, there were several others that left me wondering “hmm?” That’s all I can say without telling you everything. I wish I could ask the author personally if what I’m thinking was what she was really going for, because if so, she did an amazing job, but if that wasn’t her intent, the story left me hanging and I didn’t quite like how I felt afterward. I so wanted my scenarios to be the version she was going for, but I felt like the author held back. This was not a bad story at all. In fact, I gobbled it up like I did her other book, but I could tell she was going for something different and it just didn’t quite work the way I would have liked.

The Sexy Nerd gives, The Younger Wife four older husbands. I struggled between three and four stars. The reason I’m settling on four is because Hepworth is an amazing author and she really wrote the hell out of this book. I cannot deny her incredible talent. Even though I still have some lingering questions, this was a very enjoyable storyline to read and follow. This family had a lot of layers to it.  The Younger Wife will go on sale Tues., April 5, 2022.  Please pick up and/or download your copy at your favorite book retailers.  Until next time, you know what to do!

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