DEAD TO HER
by Sarah Pinborough
Two trophy wives in Savannah, Georgia, learn that wealth and status can’t protect them when their secrets and lies catch up to them.
Marcie thinks she has finally escaped her bleak past in Idaho. She broke up Jason Maddox’s first marriage and is now Mrs. Maddox, with all the trappings of mansions, country clubs, and the right social set. But when Jason’s 65-year-old boss, William Radford IV, a recent widower—having buried the saintly and never-forgotten Eleanor—returns from London with 22-year-old Keisha, a stunning bride, Marcie’s status as the alpha wife seems uncertain. And is Jason flirting with Keisha? As the novel unfolds, alternating between each woman's perspective, we learn that the husbands may not be the prizes they seem, either. (Though did they ever seem like prizes?) And everyone in Savannah, it seems, has secrets, some more dangerous than others. The author’s ability to build suspense is hampered by overwriting (“Splinters of her heart broke off and she wanted to stab him with them”) and tedious passages; editing would have made the book tighter and moved the plot along better. It’s also a struggle to spend so much time with, or care much about, characters a police officer deems “such truly atrocious people.”
If you do manage to stick with this crowd until the end, you may at least be surprised by a few late-breaking twists and turns.