Thriller
Pretty Little Wife
Debut
We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Darby Kane, on your first book!
Early Release
This is an early release that's only available to our members—the rest of the world has to wait to read it.
Quick take
Till death do us part gets a whole new meaning in this twisted domestic suspense about a dead husband gone missing.
Good to know
Fast read
400+ pages
Creepy
Marriage issues
Synopsis
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.
Free sample
Get an early look from the first pages of Pretty Little Wife.
Pretty Little Wife
Chapter One
A monster.
She missed the signs before. Maybe ignored them without fully realizing it. Now she couldn’t unsee them.
Adrenaline raced through her as she tore their bedroom apart. Overturned the laundry basket and scattered the contents. Shoved the bed, banging her shin on the metal bed frame before pushing the mattress to check underneath. Crawled on her knees across the floor, ignoring the shooting pain as bone struck hardwood. She even checked behind the heavy curtains he insisted they use because light in the morning gave him a headache.
The revulsion festering inside her, carefully tucked away for years so as not to spill over and contaminate their tenuous peace, exploded. A wave of scalding heat ran through her, poisoning and erasing every good memory.
The stupid blackout curtains. She’d searched for weeks for the combination of the right color and the perfect dark liner he’d barked at her to find. Never mind that she preferred waking up to the light pouring in or that the heavy material gave the room a suffocating sense of darkness.
His rules and his needs.
Why I love it
Julie Clark
Author, The Last Flight
I budgeted two weeks to read Pretty Little Wife, which is funny because I devoured it in two days. I don’t want to say too much but this book has it all, including a protagonist who is keeping secrets and characters who all—for some reason or another—fall under suspicion, and maybe not even for the murder. We (may) already know who did that.
Lila Ridgefield isn’t who she says she is, but that doesn’t make her unreliable. It means she hasn’t told us all of her secrets yet. But one secret we know right away: Lila killed her husband Aaron, setting it up to look like a suicide. Much to her surprise, his body immediately goes missing. Did Aaron really die? If so, then who moved him? Suddenly, all hell has broken loose.
This is the type of thriller I love the most: A taut domestic suspense with just a shade of police procedural woven in. There are so many layers and so many questions about marriage, shame, and the power dynamics that animate our most dysfunctional relationships. Through it all, Pretty Little Wife asks: How far would you go to right a wrong?
Member ratings (31,485)
Rachel B.
New York, NY
Like Mr and Mrs Smith if they both were psychopaths...surrounded by other psychopaths. The ending was a little predictable but I loved getting there and looked forward to every single page. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Emileigh C.
Vestavia Hills, AL
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️I zoomed through this book- on accident! The end of most chapters almost always lured me into starting the next one immediately. Thrilling, but not scary. Feminist-esque. Enjoyable thriller!
Laura H.
Middlefield, CT
Couldn’t put this book down! So many twists and turns, I didn’t want to stop reading until I knew how what happened all worked out (sorry to be vague here - but I don’t want spoilers)’. Loved it!!!!!
Julie R.
Dearborn, MI
Just when you think you’ve figured this one out, you’d be wrong. Loved this suspenseful what happened to the body novel. It’s a different take because you already know who’s the killer but the rest?
Cat J.
Portland, OR
Isn’t a dead husband supposed to stay dead? Follow Lila, who knows her husband is dead, but his body ends up going missing, what’s going on? This thriller was one that I couldn’t put down, a must read