I am a long time fan of Lauren Willig's Pink Carnation series so I was excited to try something different from her. I was not disappointed! Far from the humorous adventures of the Pink Carnation's compatriots, this is a historical mystery that kept me guessing until the end!


The story vacillates from the past to the present, finally meeting in the middle as the murder is solved much differently that I expected! The characters are well crafted, as are the elements of their lives, helping to create the tension and make you wonder what really happened! I was interested from beginning to end, and still not entirely convinced about how the ending truly stands.


I gave this a 5/5, I definitely need to read more of Lauren Willig's non-Carnation books!

Annabelle and Bayard Van Duyvil seem to lead a charmed life in the Gilded Age. They met in London and fell in love, returning to a privileged life on the banks of the Hudson River where his socially elite family holds sway. They seem to have a fairytale existence – her Tudor English home recreated in New York, wealth, twin three-year-olds they adore and a loving marriage.

But is all as it seems? There are rumors Annabelle is having an affair with the architect who designed their home, Illyria.

When Bayard is found stabbed and dying during a party at their home and Annabelle disappears, presumed drowned in the Hudson, the press jumps on the story. Bayard’s sister Janie works with a reporter to discover the truth, no matter what it might be. Did Annabelle kill Bayard and run away? Did he push her into the river as she was stabbing him? Why did he whisper “George” as he died?

As Janie investigates, more and more questions arise about Annabelle and Bayard and what their lives truly were. There are twists, turns, alliances and heartbreak as the story of Annabelle and Bayard unfolds.

This book was ok. I couldn’t get into it. I think it was my lack of interest in this particular period the book is set in.

Lauren Willig in The English Wife gives the reader an American gothic novel set in the Gilded Age in New York and upstate New York. Up to her usual family intrigues; the heroine is beset with family tragedy and the hero is a journalist without wealthy credentials whom she has asked to find out whe destroyed her family. Enjoy.

It was fine, but I can't say it particularly grabbed me. It felt like a plot I've seen before. The cover was beautiful, though.

Lauren Willig's latest novel, The English Wife, is an engrossing Victorian era murder mystery with plenty of intrigue and is a perfect companion for a weekend trip or quiet evening. Quickly paced and peppered with a couple of well placed red herrings - it's a good choice for those who enjoy the historical fiction genre with a little bit of romance, and mystery.

I loved many parts of this book. The story was super engrossing and I didn't want to put it down because I wanted to know what happened next. The characters were all fascinating and flawed and relatably human. And the setting very vividly captured 1890s Gilded Age New York (I completely by chance had just read the chapter of At Home by Bill Bryson that talks about that period and specifically the architects and Very Extra buildings, which did an excellent job setting the scene).

It does fall into some tired tropes re: queer characters. With that being what the author ran with, I think it was done pretty well and with sympathy for everyone involved. But still. Of fucking course the one who dies is the one who's gay.

Also there were a couple of loose ends that seemed to fall off the face of the earth and not like they were intentionally left open ended:
What happened to David? This is the thing that bothered me the most because everything and everyone else got some manner of resolution and after that overheard conversation he just, what, goes back to the party? And the narrative never goes back to him at all even though his lover had been murdered. What happens to him? How does he grieve? Where does he go? What the fuck, author.
Also, I don't like that Giles Lacey gets to literally save lives, and then go back to his estate,and we never deal with (because there's no one alive to know) the fact that he's a fucking rapist.

Back to the good: the reveal of what actually happened to Annabelle was such a perfect anticlimax because Giles Lacey had built up this elaborate story in his head worthy of a sensational novel, and nope she just eloped to Australia. And even after Georgie drops that truth bomb he still can't possibly imagine who with because a common farmer is so beneath his notice to be as good as non-existent.

I did like the main het romance, but it reminded me rather a lot of the one in The Other Daughter where the female lead leaves the world of the rich and famous (or attempts to get to said world) and ends up with a journalist. Lauren Willig, I have read all the Pink books; I know you are capable of other relationship dynamics.

I raced through this well-paced novel. I loved the secrets, as well as the juicy drama between the married couple.

I thought this was pretty great. It's historical fiction and a mystery at the same time. Annabelle and Bay seem to have everything, but Janie and Anne find Bay stabbed and Annabelle missing during the ball at their new estate. Then it turns out that Annabelle may not be who they thought she was. The novel goes back and forth between their story and Janie's quest to find out the truth about what happened during the ball and why. I definitely did not have this one figured out in advance. That is probably a spoiler, but I'm leaving it in. I definitely recommend this.

A compelling mystery set among New York City's historical elite, with plenty of suspense and deduction. An exciting read by one of my favorite authors.

I really wanted to read this book, however, it was archived before I was able to do that. It sounded really good and is exactly the kind of novel that I love to read. I provide feedback on every book I read, so this was a loss for myself as well as NetGalley, Lauren Willing, and the publisher as well.

This historical novel has it all, family, family drama, love, murder, romance.

Illegitimate children, wealthy British sons and cousins, snobby New Yorkers who consider the Vanderbilts the tainted nouveau riche, “The English Wife” has it all, including the growing friendship between a wealthy daughter and a poor journalist who has pulled himself up from a childhood on the streets. Slightly gothic, the novel unrolls fascinating plots within plots within plots, and it definitely does not allow any reader to walk away bored. I enjoyed this complicated book, and I want to know more about those characters left standing at the end.

A groggy, caffeine-heavy morning for me after a night reading into the wee hours, thanks to Lauren Willig’s Gothic romance, historical mystery The English Wife. The novel opens in January 1899 in Cold Spring NY, at Illyria, Bay and Annabelle Van Duyvil’s country estate. Bay and Annabelle’s hermetic existence has thus far been the bane of Bay’s appearances-are-all mother, Alva. Formidable, humorless Alva is ever flanked by Janie, her mousy, silent daughter and Anne, the mouthy, flamboyant niece she took in. To Alva’s great society-loving heart, Bay and Annabelle are finally celebrating the opening of their magnificent estate by holding a costume ball for New York’s best, brightest, and finest. Until now, Bay and Annabelle’s life has been a mystery. They are a couple around whom rumours of eccentricities and infidelities swirl … maybe because they keep to themselves and, at least on the surface, appear to live an idyllic existence with twins Sebastian and Viola. Bay and Annabelle don’t seem to give a fig about what the “best people” think and that only renders them more interesting to the society pages and ensures Alva Van Duyvil’s frustrated meddling.

The novel is narrated, at least initially, by plain-Jane, under-her-mother’s-thumb Janie. Bay and Annabelle are “seen” from a glamorous distance. In the opening scene, Anne summons Janie from her wallflower stance at the ball to search for Bay and Annabelle. They are to open the dancing. In an atmospheric scene of cold, snow, and dark, Janie and Anne run through the garden calling for Bay and Annabelle. They discover Bay on the ground, in his Hades costume, with a jewelled dagger in his chest. Janie falls to her knees to hear him utter one word, “George,” before he dies. As Janie looks towards the Hudson, she sees her sister-in-law’s body floating by.

Thus begins Willig’s double narrative: the unfolding of Janie’s search for the truth behind her brother and sister-in-law’s deaths and the flashbacks to Bay and Annabelle’s meeting, wooing, and married life all the way to their final, fatal scene. Willig deftly reveals, like a deadly flower opening its petals, the deceptions, betrayals, and obsessions, but also the love, obligation, and friendship, that bring Bay and Annabelle to this point. At the same time, like a humble and pretty pansy showing its face to the spring, Willig also brings plain-Janie into her own and gifts her a gloriously romantic HEA. While I was mesmerized by Bay and Annabelle’s story, especially when Willig takes us back to their meeting and courtship in London and Paris, as well as their married life in the US, I adored seeing Janie find answers, emerge from the shadows of her mother’s tyranny, and match wits with her partner-in-sleuthing-and-swain, the Irish journalist James Burke.

Willig has been fascinated by how well we can know other people, how identity is formed by the secrets we hold, how secrets mark and cripple us and render us unknowable to those we love. This is Bay and Annabelle’s tragedy. On the other hand, Janie’s meek, mild, circumspect existence, her devotion to her charity, her sole defiance of her mother, her life “on the fringe,” more observing than observed, her introversion and bookish ways, allow her to read the narratives around her, find answers, understand motive and, ultimately, free herself from the strictures that prevent her from becoming her full self to enjoy happiness, connection, and self-actualization. But that’s not where Janie starts. She starts, like the Second Mrs. De Winter, from a place of humility and plainness: “If there was one skill Janie had learned over the years, it was the art of absenting herself” and “She was only bold and brave within the covers of her books.” She does, however, start from a place that says “I care,” that seeks justice and protects the innocent, in the form of her niece and nephew. Janie’s values will lead her to unveil her family’s dark mystery, but Janie begins by posing the question “how well can we know someone?”: ” … what did she know of Annabelle? For all that Annabelle was her brother’s wife, they had never proceeded beyond a polite reserve. It wasn’t that Annabelle was unkind; just distant, like the image of the moon reflected on water.”

Willig’s novel is really the stories of these two women, the spinster and the “English wife”, one who ends in tragedy and loss and the other who ends in life and love. Their journeys say a lot about living one’s life with integrity and there are glimmers of this for Annabelle before the final tragedy. The central conceit of Annabelle and Bay’s life, however, proved to be trite (I also forgive Willig the red herring). What wasn’t trite was how much I cared about the characters and how much I wanted them to find justice on the one hand and love on the other. And what I’ve always loved about Willig is how she actually lays out her whole narrative, open for the reader to figure out, not through foreshadowing and cheap hint-dropping, but via allusion. Because Willig is a reader herself and has obviously loved the books that make up the literary tradition with which she identifies … Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda, Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the romance novel, and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.

The English Wife is not derivative. Willig brings her own contemporary stamp, her own ethos, and her elegant, allusive prose. I leave you with one delightful example, from Janie and James’s HEA (cue, maybe, the famous sleuthing couples of ’30s film?) ” ‘You, Miss Van Duyvil, have the face of a lady and the soul of a bandit,’ said Mr. Burke” and Janie’s aspiration, to live with panache,“She had tried appropriate, and it had given her headaches. Maybe it was time to be gloriously, fearlessly inappropriate. Within reason.” I loved that final proviso. Janie is in the great spinster tradition of meticulous examination, introverted consideration, and cautious adventure-embracing. 😉

I’d love to see more of Janie and James, but I suspect that Willig does her serial writing only for the Pink Carnation (following, lovingly, Willig’s great love for The Scarlet Pimpernel and Scaramouche). Let it be said then, I’m grateful for the sleepless night. In Lauren Willig’s The English Wife, Miss Austen and I found “no charm equal to tenderness of heart,” Emma.

Lauren Willig’s The English Wife is published by St. Martin’s Press. It was released on January 9th and may be procured, in either in “e” or dead-tree, from your preferred vendors. I received an e-ARC from St. Martin’s Press, via Netgalley.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley for an eARC of this book.
While the premise and the plot were intriguing, this was not what I expected from this author. The book is well written and there are twists and turns that keep it so interesting that parts cannot be understood. There was much jumping between time frames which were not reader friendly. I wanted to like this more but alas, 3 stars is as much as I can give.

This is really more like 3.5 stars for me, but I am a fan of Lauren Willig so I'm rounding up. The English Wife got off to a slow start, and for about the first quarter of the book I was somewhat confused about who the characters were and how they all fit together. The story did pick up eventually, and by the end I couldn't put it down. However, I didn't like it as much as I like some of Lauren Willig's other books - the humor and sass that are so great and fun in the Pink Carnation were missing from this, and some more lightness would have been a good addition.

I received an advance copy from the publisher via NetGalley.

I picked this book out solely for its description; I've never read the author before and had not heard of the book before seeing it on Netgalley. We get the story told through two very different women and yet both seem to be struggling up against some of the same issues: identity, fitting in a world that isn't really their own, and trying to find someone who as devoted to them as they are to this person. I admittedly found that I enjoyed Janie's story much better. Janie was relatable and intelligent. While I don't understand her world much, I understood some of her predicaments and struggles. I enjoyed Georgie but she was hard to keep up with and living a life I didn't envy. Overall, the characterization was the best part of this story. The story itself left some open ended situations that I wish had been wrapped up. I did enjoy the twist of who was responsible for the tragedy. It seemed just about right. 3.5 stars.

Well written and an enjoyable story. I really enjoyed reading this book and look forward to reading more by this author.

Janie Van Duyvil has always been in the shadow of her charismatic brother, Bay. Janie, still unwed and figuring out her life, is the polar opposite of Bay. He is married to Annabelle, whom he met in London, and they live a charmed life in their stately home along with their twins. Except tragedy strikes and a mystery ensues. Bay throws an extravagant party at his house and ends up dead with a knife in his chest uttering one final world to Janie that only she hears. To complicate matters further, Annabelle is nowhere to be found! The reporters are all over this scandal and start to formulate their own theories surrounding the confusing turn of events, but Janie wants to get the bottom of this on her own. She doesn't know Annabelle or anything about her past, so she really wants to uncover the truth. She forms a relationship with a reporter with the hopes of cracking the case, but the more she figures out about things, the more she is questioning everything. Who can she trust? The English Wife by Lauren Willig is a fun Gilded Age mystery that at first drags a bit, but as the mystery unfolds, the story definitely picks up.

The characters in The English Wife could have been fleshed out a bit more. I will admit that I struggled in the beginning of the book trying to figure out who was who and I kept getting Anne and Annabelle confused; I mean couldn't she have come up with a different name? Plus, the flashbacks to a mystery woman only complicated things further. Once I had that sorted out, I was able to enjoy the mystery and budding romance.

The strong points of The English Wife are the historical details. Willig is excellent at bringing various time periods to life and she excels at this as well in The English Wife. Gilded Age New York is such a compelling time in history and I loved the lavish parties, the extravagance, the social etiquette, the family secrets, all in combination with a murder mystery.

I wasn't able to predict the mystery in The English Wife. It definitely took me by surprise. There are some definite plot twists that kept me turning the pages.

While I didn't enjoy this novel as much as some of Willig's others, I still appreciated the tale and was glad I read it. So, if you are looking for a historical mystery that will keep you guessing, give this one a try this winter.

I was really torn about this story and while I loved some aspects of it, the other have left me bereft and confused.

For example, the author did an amazing job taking me into the world of these characters, however the pace and multiple points of view and numerous supporting characters have managed to take me out of the story.

I will say this, the mystery was good and the ending surprising, so if you are a fan of this author, I have no doubt that you’ll enjoy this story, but if this is your first time reading her, I’d probably pass on this one and look for another of her many wonderful stories.

Melanie for b2b