The Book:
Pretty Little Wife by Darby Kane, 2020
The Characters:
Married couple Lila and Aaron
Aaron’s brother Jared
Lila’s client Ryan
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The Plot (from Goodreads):
Lila Ridgefield lives in an idyllic college town, but not everything is what it seems. Lila isn’t what she seems. A student vanished months ago. Now, Lila’s husband, Aaron, is also missing. At first these cases are treated as horrible coincidences until it’s discovered the student is really the third of three unexplained disappearances over the last few years. The police are desperate to find the connection, if there even is one. Little do they know they might be stumbling over only part of the truth….
With the small town in an uproar, everyone is worried about the whereabouts of their beloved high school teacher. Everyone except Lila, his wife. She’s definitely confused about her missing husband but only because she was the last person to see his body, and now it’s gone.
Lila finds Aaron’s phone with evidence that he was sexually abusing his students. She all but kills him (although doesn’t check that he’s dead) and leaves his body to be found in the school parking lot. The body disappears and Lila begins receiving threatening notes.
The Twist:
Jared was in on it with Aaron. They liked to “hunt” and kill young girls, since their father had taught them how. Aaron was just in it for the sex, and Jared would kill them. Jared killed all the missing college students. Their father had killed their mother.
Ryan and Lila were having an affair, but Ryan was just using Lila to write a book about her father.
Jared knew Lila killed Aaron and was writing the notes to taunt her. He had also moved the body.
The Ending:
Lila finds all this out when the police show her a picture of a cabin and she recognizes a rocking chair. She goes to the cabin and finds Jared, and he confesses. The police take Lila’s word for it.
Ginny (the lead detective) visits Lila to tell her that she knows the truth. Lila knew about both brothers and plotted to have them kill each other. She got all of the trust fund money from both brothers. Lila gives a large portion of the money to the families of the victims. (But if Lila was on to Jared all along, why was she so freaked out about the notes, and how did she not guess that Jared had been the one to move the body?)
The Review:
As more time passes, the more I am mentally lowering my rating of this book. I read it last week before going out of town for a long weekend, and by the time I got back, I couldn’t remember a single thing that happened in the story. Even the blurb didn’t jog my memory–I had to skim back through the book before it came back to me. I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but given that I can’t remember it a week later, it must not have been too mind-blowing. Now that I’ve reminded myself, though, I’ll do my best to review it based on my thoughts when I finished:
The plot was interesting, and a few of the twists caught me by surprise, but there was nothing too outlandish that will stick with me. Overall, a typical thriller–interesting and entertaining as I was reading it. I didn’t guess the ending, but I also didn’t find it entirely believable.
The first half of this book felt a little disjointed, but it soon became clear as to why it was written the way it was. Lila was so emotionless about Aaron’s disappearance, and that made me think she was an unreliable narrator. I didn’t really like Lila. I couldn’t relate to her at all, but as the story progressed I began to think that was intentional. Her character could have been developed a little more, at least to make me love to hate her. Perhaps I was supposed to relate the most to Ginny?
This was a Book of the Month pick last month. Haven’t checked out Book of the Month yet? Use my code for $10 off your first box. (I get a $10 credit too, but that means more reviews for me to share with you!)
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