The Stepford Wives

This book has one of the most iconic reveals ever, and I went in knowing how it would end. However, that didn't change the fact that I was hopeful that maybe, just maybe, the ending would change. Due to knowing the ending, I was also able to pick up on smaller details and foreshadowing, which is always fun.

I have read this book before. I am a fan of it so when I had the chance to listen to the ALC... I jumped right on it.

The narrator is BRILLIANT and bought a new depth to the stepford wives. I loved how real the characters all felt and my only real issue with the book is the ending... I needed to know more!

It's definitely worth the read if you have never read it before but I highly recommend the audio!!

Ira Levin is a renowned author of horror and thrillers. Despite his acclaim, I had up to this point managed to avoid reading both Rosemary's Baby and this work. I'm grateful that The Howl Society book club selected this novella and inspired me to finally check it off my comically long TBR. Although I had never read any of Levin's books or seen their film adaptations, I was, however, familiar with Levin from my experience directing a community theatre production of his play Deathtrap. Based on Deathtrap, a thriller about writers, marketable ideas, love, a psychic, and more, I expected The Stepford Wives be thrilling, twisty, and perhaps even violent. In a way, it was. Without giving away too much of the plot, let it suffice to say that a family moves to the suburban town of Stepford, and the novel's protagonist Joanna begins to suspect that something odd is happening that transforms all the women into their husband's idea of an ideal house wife. Beautiful and devoted to housework. Throughout the book clues are dropped, some red herrings too, and dread begins to build toward the book's conclusion. While I felt it took a little bit to get started, once it got going it was a thrilling ride. Though this book isn't characterized by the overt violence of Deathtrap, the reader witnesses other types of violence including gaslighting, oppressive gender roles, and perhaps even something more sinister still. As much fun as it was to try to figure out what was going on in Stepford, I found the book's conclusion to not be totally satisfying. There was too much ambiguity in the book for my taste. Still, a great book that still feels frighteningly relevant today, despite having been written in the 1970s. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I was expecting to be really frightened by this book. After talking with my mother about her reactions to the book and the original movie (I believe it came out in the 50s or 60s), I was expecting this book to send chills down my spine and really freak me out. Either I have been desensitized by all of the crime/violence on TV or I just don't get freaked out easily. I thought this book was well written and the premise behind it was fascinating: a group of men move their families to a community where all of the women go through mysterious transformations from independent, career-minded women to sex-kitten housewives with the sole goal of serving their husbands. Okay, how do the wives get that way? Well, although I knew how they got that way, I didn't really feel that the book did a very good job of telling the reader. I've seen the remake with Nicole Kidman, Glen Close and Matthew Broderick and I knew that the goal of the director was not to remake the suspense filled original movie, but to give it a humorous edge. It did just that. The original film, IMHO, was more suspenseful than the book, but still not quite enough to send chills down my spine. This book is a quick read and easy to get through.

My advice: in all honesty, don't bother reading it, just watch the remake. It has some good laughs and is a much more enjoyable experience than reading the book.