Two Dead Wives

I just finished Two Dead Wives by Adele Parks and here are my thoughts.

When a wife is murdered, isn't it nearly always the husband? What happens when there are two husbands?

Having two lives and two identities didn't do Kylie any favors in the end when she is kidnapped and the police are now looking for a body. The case has gripped the nation and the whole affair won't end for either man.

DCI Clements is on the case and she knows that the dark side of humanity can make you a person do some unspeakable things.

Stacie Jones is recovering from a serious illness, being nursed back to health by her retired GP father. Can their lives remain reclusive?

How are these families all linked and how much danger are all they all in?

I didn't love this book. I don't mean it was a bad read but it was really a slog in places. I don't think it needed to be this long and some of the POVs were lengthy and there wasn't much balance. It is a sequel to another book which answers the one question I had about why Kylie would lead a double life and I hated that I didn't know that before I started this one because they don't answer that in this read.

I also felt the book was a little on the predictable side and all the excellence was in the last ⅓ of the book. The writing was good, it just felt like a lot of padding to a book that really didn't need it. There was some real magic in here and some real waste of paper real estate.

It was hard to care about any of the characters except the Oli who I did invest my time in. I don't know if it's because it is a sequel and you do need to read book 1 or whether it just wasn't for me.

I would definitely try this author again though.

3.5 stars

Thank you to @htpbooks and @netgalley for my gifted copy

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WOMAN LAST SEEN Began My War On Books Featuring COVID. This Book Continues It. Having read literally 394 books between WOMAN LAST SEEN and this book, I did not *even* realize this book was a sequel to that one until the very end, when I read the Author's Note. Perils of reading so much? This isn't exactly the first time this has happened to me in my reading these last few years, though I think this is (so far) the most books between sequels. Long winded way of saying, if you read these books closer together than I did, or perhaps have better memory than I do, you'll likely pick up on the fact that this is a sequel within the first chapter or two, so despite me not finding out until the end... it isn't exactly a secret, either.

All of that noted, as with Woman Last Seen, here we get an excellent mystery/ thriller sequel, one that actually manages to work within the bounds given by the original book when a sequel was never actually intended - and thus showing just how strong of a storyteller Parks is (and perhaps how good of an editor she has). If you love fairly fast paced, character driven mysteries, you're likely going to enjoy this one.

And then... the COVID. Whereas the first book dealt with COVID more as an ominous foreshadowing, being set in the days immediately prior to the global lockdowns that destroyed far more lives than the virus ever will, this book dealt head on with said lockdowns and actually incorporated them - and the slow global re-opening - into the story. Thus, while I deducted a star from Woman Last Seen because I DO NOT WANT TO READ ABOUT COVID even though it was more tangential in that book, with it being far more central and ever present in this tale, the deduction remains because even nearly four years later, I STILL DO NOT WANT TO READ ABOUT COVID. My war against such tales began with Woman Last Seen, and with Two Dead Wives it continues, along with my own real "weapon" at my disposal: the single star deduction in rating. Seriously, authors, PLEASE - just abandon that entire year or so of human history. Or at least ignore those parts of that year.

But again, other than the COVID aspects, this truly was a superb tale that truly shows how remarkable Parks is as a storyteller - I truly don't know of many that *could* have written such a book when it was never intended, and I perhaps know of even fewer who *would* write such a book when readers clamor for it.

Very much recommended.