'Melanie Hale is a devoted mother to her two children, a diligent caregiver to her ailing mother-in-law and a trusted neighbour in their wealthy Louisiana community. Above all, she’s a loving partner to her wonderful husband, Collin.
'Then there are the parts of herself that Mel keeps hidden. She’s exhausted, worried and unfulfilled. So much so that one night, after a writers’ group meeting, Mel begins an affair with a successful local author named Luke. Suddenly she’s transformed into a role she doesn’t recognise—a woman who deceives with unseemly ease. A woman who might be capable of just about anything.
'When Mel finds Luke’s dead body in his lavish rented house, she realises just how high the stakes have become. Not only does she have to keep her affair a secret in order to preserve her marriage, but she desperately needs to avoid being implicated in Luke’s death. But who would want to kill him? Who else in her life is keeping secrets? And most terrifying of all, how far will they—and she—go to keep those secrets hidden?'
I think Such A Good Wife is one of those rare books where whilst I really enjoyed reading it, I absolutely hate the lead character. Honestly, this book is a great read, and I had an absolute blast trying to figure out the mystery and reading long after I should have taken a break because was desperate to find out what happened next, but Mel is not a person I would ever be able to like.
The story begins by introducing reads to Melanie Hale, a woman with a decent life. She has a caring husband who gives her space when she needs it, is kind and caring when they spend time together. She has a teenage daughter who's becoming a bit of a handful. And she has a young autistic son who's close to joining a new school equipped to meet his needs. They all live in a big, expensive house in a great neighbourhood. Other than taking care of her kids needs whenever they're not in school Mel's only real responsibility is to take care of her mother-in-law, who lives with them but is suffering from dementia.
Mel has some responsibilities and some stresses in her life yes, but she doesn't have to work, her finances are secure, and she has the freedom and encouragement to turn her hand to any kind of hobby or activity she might ever want to. So, with all that in mind she doesn't seem like the kind of person to go out and have an affair. Yet when she meets a smutty romance author when taking part in a local creative writing group she soon finds herself turning her back on her family and jumping into bed with this exciting, rich writer.
Despite constantly telling herself that she can't keep cheating on her marriage, that she's hurting her wonderful, kind husband, and deciding to break off her affair with Luke she keeps going back to him, keeps sleeping with him. Until one day she goes to his house and finds him laying dead outside. Fearing her affair coming to light and destroying her family, she tries to remove any evidence of her presence in the house and steals Luke's phone. Worried that he might not be found, she makes an anonymous tip to the police. This begins an investigation into his death that Mel watched via the news with baited breath.
However, when the news says that Luke was murdered, and Mel begins receiving mysterious messages threatening to reveal her connection to Luke Mel finds herself caught up in a desperate web of lies as she tries desperately to not have her entire life fall apart around her.
The central mystery of Such A Good Wife, of how Luke ended up dead, of who might be trying to blackmail Mel, and how Mel is going to get away with things is an interesting one. There were times where I thought I'd begun to piece things together, to figure out what the answers were, but Seraphina Nova Glass is clever enough to lead me down an obvious path before pulling the run out from under me to reveal something completely different. Much like her previous book, Someone's Listening, the mystery is never what you first think, and there are clues laid out early on that if you're anything like me you're going to overlook because of how carefully they've been hidden.
The characters are mostly nice people too, and there are some people in the book who you'll come to care for. Mel's husband, Colin, is a decent man, one who manages to balance out his busy work life with caring for his family. Early on it looks like he's going to be one of those husbands who's always working late, his head buried in his laptop, or chatting away on phone calls; but he always seems to have time to take part in barbecues with his wife and children, he takes his kids out for meals, he gives his wife the time away to go and spend time with her friends and take part in clubs. He's a decent man, which makes you feel even worse for him when Mel cheats on him.
Another character who I really enjoyed is Lacy, a young woman who Mel comes across in a bar parking lot after she's been sexually assaulted and beaten by a local cop called Joe, the same local cop who runs the baseball club for kids that her son plays in. Mel helps Lacy out because she sees a woman in need, and over the course of the book she keeps coming back to her, at first to check in on her and to make sure she's okay; but eventually so that she can use her connection to the police for her own good. Lacy is a decent person, a struggling single mother who's caught up in a relationship with an abuser. She comes from a completely different world than Mel, living paycheck to paycheck, doing multiple jobs just to keep a roof over her sons head and food in his belly; but she's a nice person. She comes to see Mel as a friend, tries to form a connection with her, all whilst being used by Mel to get what she wants.
I think I ended up connecting with Colin and Lacy because they were two people who Mel was hurting the most, even though she may not have wanted to, and she may even have ended up doing good for them by the end, she does treat them as disposable and beneath her at times.
There is one thing that I feel I do need to talk about, and it's something of a spoiler, so if you don't want to read about it please skip forward to the last paragraph. Such A Good Wife features sexual assault. The story-line with Lacy is heavily connected with rape and abuse; it's how we first meet her. And this in itself is fine to include, it's important to talk about how people can get stuck in abusive relationships and how people in positions of power, like cops, can be abusers too. The part of the book that I struggled with, however, was that at the end Melanie fakes a rape. She seduces Joe, gets him to sleep with her whilst being rough and films it. She then beats herself to add more wounds, collects the semen from his condom and inserts it into herself, and edits the footage. She goes to the hospital, has them fill out a form that says she was raped, and collects the semen as evidence. She then uses this to blackmail Joe into taking her name out of the murder investigation and to leave Lacy alone.
I honestly didn't know how I felt about this. This was essentially someone faking a sexual assault, lying about being raped; something that is awful and should never, ever be done. However, she did it to a man who is a rapist, a man who beats and abuses women, and uses his powers as a police officer to get away with it. If anyone deserves to be taken down a peg or two it's him for sure, but to do so with a fake rape? And for Mel to further lie to her husband after everything she's already been through? It just didn't sit right with me. It might just be myself, and I'm sure that different people will react to this differently. But the thing that I disliked about it the most was that in the review copy there was no content warning given in the book. As this is something more books have started doing, and books from Titan, I was surprised that one wasn't included for these themes of abuse and rape. Hopefully this will be something that will be included in the finished release.
Overall, I really enjoyed Such A Good Wife. The plot was interesting and engaging, with a mystery that I was invested in and characters that I came to care about. Yes, there was some moral ambiguity in the book too, with a lead character that I didn't really think was a decent person, but then being challenged like that is part of the fun of books with dubious protagonists that aren't just 'good' people. If you enjoy a good mystery story, and like seeing how domestic life can quickly go off the rails this is a book that you'll probably enjoy.
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