Review: The Other Wife

The Other Wife by Claire McGowan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I am not sure of the average salary for a professional Audible Narrator (is this the official LinkedIn job title?), but I will take half the pay solely to help alleviate the confusion inflicted on listeners when one woman is reading all parts in a multiple POV narrative. I had to use the "go back 30 seconds" button many times to figure out which British housewife was recounting her side of the story. I get it, my comprehension would probably improve if I wasn't also decorating mock living rooms as though I am some up and coming HGTV reality star (shout out to Design Home!) while listening to my audiobooks - but I refuse to stop trying, and failing, to multitask.

There were actually multiple aspects of this novel that I found to be slightly muddled and difficult to keep straight, but again, I suppose this could be user error on my part. Maybe Q-tips should be on the "essential for quarantine" shopping list? The men in the story had blurred together by the second half, and there wasn't even a male narrator I can blame for my troubles. Shame. But, what I do recall is that I found the ending to be satisfying, and that is worth something. It may have been slightly implausible, but I can always get behind a progressive, very girl power!, chicks-before-dicks moral to the story. Even if some people have to die in order to properly execute (I can't remember how many due to being a crap listener as previously stated).

You see, I have a love / hate relationship with Audible because I can race through three books a week and trick people into thinking I am just THAT much of an academic (until they see the actual reading content), but it also means I am only retaining 65% of what I have heard, and one story line tends to just flow right on into the next, since in a blind taste test, I probably couldn't tell you which is which due to the similarities in the novels I exclusively select. For these reasons, it becomes extremely taxing to write witty and accurate book reviews, so I instead am forced to go off on tangents where I rely on self deprecation and the promotion of home decorating Apps to fill the void, instead of actually dissecting the book itself. Good thing I didn't have to do that in this case!

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