This was a brilliant read. As soon as I started reading this book I just knew I was going to love it. Highly recommended

This is the ninth book in the Joseph O'Loughlin series by author Michael Robotham.
Childhood sweethearts William and Mary have been married for sixty years. William is a celebrated surgeon, Mary a devoted wife. Both have a strong sense of right and wrong.

A good read, but unfortunately it did not capture my attention as much as I hoped it would.

The story itself is good, but I wonder if it was just the wrong book for me. Everyone else seems to have really enjoyed it. I blame the pandemic for lack of concentration.... :-)

Another killer read by one of my favourite authors! Well written, gripping and entertaining until the end. Recommended.

Twisting novel

Childhood sweethearts William and Mary have been married for sixty years. William is a celebrated surgeon, Mary a devoted wife. This is what their son, Joe O'Loughlin, has always believed. But when Joe is summoned to the hospital with news that his father has been brutally attacked, his world is turned upside down. Who is the strange woman crying at William's bedside, covered in his blood - a friend, a mistress, a fantasist or a killer? Against the advice of the police, Joe launches his own investigation. As he learns more, he discovers sides to his father he never knew - and is forcibly reminded that the truth comes at a price.

This is not the first book of this series, which I didn’t know until after I had finished the novel. I found the story difficult to get into and felt as though there was a lacking focus on the actual crime with the author jumping between side stories. Robotham doesn't delve into the characters in this novel, but maybe, if you had read the previous books, I imagine this wouldn't be a problem.

I felt as though I was waiting for something to happen and although good, I was disappointed that the twist was in the last two chapters. I enjoyed the style of writing but there were loose ends, meaning I had lots of questions.

I would recommend reading this only if you are prepared to read the whole series, as it isn’t successful as a stand-alone novel.

Lucy

Breakaway Reviewers received a copy of the book to review.

I broke my cardinal rule of not starting a series unless I read them in the right order. I think you can read this as a stand alone but I would have rather read the previous books in this series first and had the chance to get to know the main characters.

Professor Joseph O Laughlin has a call from the Hospital saying his dad William has severe head injuries and is in a coma. He arrives at the hospital and finds at his father’s side a woman called Olivia holding his hand and claiming to be his other wife!! Does his mother know about this other woman?

Joseph has problems of his own dealing with Parkinson’s and bringing up his 2 children after his wife’s death. Joe begins to investigate Olivia and try to discover who has attempted to kill his father.

There are many suspects and twists along the way and Joe discovers that his father although distant throughout his childhood, does have a human side with flaws like everybody else.

I will definitely read the other books in this series as Joe is such a strong, down to earth and a very likeable character.

Thank you to Netgalley for a copy in exchange for a review.

An excellent book about a man who discovers while his father is in hospital, that he had led a double life. A great family drama where he has to unravel how it came to this and what happens next! A great read!

The latest and quite possibly the best in the Joe O'Loughlin series.

Recently widowed and battling Parkinson's, Joe gets a call telling him his eighty year old father has been brutally attacked and in a coma. Rushing to the hospital Joe finds a woman, claiming to be his father's wife, not Joe's mother to whom his father has been married to for sixty years.

This fast moving psychological thriller is totally addictive from the very first page in this incredibly complex story, featuring flawed characters with strong family ties and emotions.

The other wife is an excellent read. This is a gripping page turner with lots of twists and turns. Great characterisation and a very interesting plot.
I highly recommend it... 😊 As with all the other books by this author it keeps you guessing until the very end.
A truley engrossing story that you could easily lose yourself in for days. A+

Thank you netgalley and the publishers for giving me the chance to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

I was introduced to Michael Robotham through ‘The Secrets She Keeps’ but The Other Wife is the first of the Joseph O’Loughlin books that I’ve read. In this, the 9th in the series, we see Joe, a clinical psychologist by trade, turning his hand to investigating - his father has been attacked, left for dead, is in a coma and the police are not coming ‘up to snuff’.

This instalment feels personal, there are lots of flashbacks to childhood which fleshes out the characters really well. Joe’s world starts to unravel from the first chapter where he meets his Dad’s ‘other wife’ and the unraveling just keeps coming as pretty much each and every ‘truth’ he has grown up with is stripped away. The unraveling doesn’t stop there though, Joe is also juggling being a single parent to his two girls who are trying to come to terms with the death of their Mum, something that Emma, in particular is having a hard time dealing with.

So, all in all we have a psychological thriller that hinges on family secrets and lies, touches on mental health issues and physical frailties - it’s a stonking read and completely unputdown-able, Michael Robotham is definitely on my list of keepers.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

This is part of a series with Joe ‘O’ Loughlin a clinical psychologist who helps the police.He is called to the hospital as his father has been brutally attacked. When he arrives a woman is at Williams bedside and it’s not Mary, Joe’s mother. Joe starts to investigate who this woman is and who had motive to attach his father. At the same time he’s trying to support his mother and help his youngest daughter through the death of her mother. His partner Vincent Ruiz tries to support and help Joe.
I have read Michael Robotham books before and enjoyed them. The story unfolds with joe learning more about his parents than any child would want to know but learns about himself along the way.
It kept me gripped as I wanted to know the truth and hoped Joe would find some peace.
Thanks to Netgalley and the Little Brown Book Group for sending me this in exchange for an open and honest review.

This is the first book by Michael Robotham which I've read. His protagonist, Joe O'Loughlin is an interesting character. He is a clinical psychologist with many problems of his own: recently widowed, diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease and a daughter who's having difficulties processing the death of her mother. At the beginning of the book he gets a call telling him his father has been attacked. When he gets to the hospital he finds a woman sitting beside his father, a woman claiming to be his wife. As Joe's father is still married to his mother he is not impressed and acts accordingly. It is clear that something is not right and Joe starts to investigate his father's attack for himself, annoying the police officer in charge of the investigation. The rest of the book is an uncovering of secrets and an examination of Joe's poor relationship with his father. A good read. I'll be looking out for this author in the future. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This is a must read for anyone who has followed Michael Robotham’s Joe O’Loughlin series. Following on from the devastating events of the previous book, Joe is slowly coming to terms with what happened. But then comes the news that his father has been involved in an horrific attack that could change everything Joe thought he knew about his own parents.

Not one to be read as a standalone, ‘The Other Wife’ is a fascinating insight into the character we have come to know and love. With the support and advice of the fabulous and larger than life Vincent Ruiz, Joe is taken on a shocking trail of family secrets and intrigue. Definitely a book not to be missed!

A fantastic 5 star read that I highly recommend to all fans of this brilliant series of books.

I had never discovered Michael Robotham before but I intend to make good this gap in my reading repertoire.

The man can certainly write and create a dazzling plot that intrigued me from the beginning.

Apparently this is the month book in a series but I was able to read it as a standalone without thinking that I had missed anything.

Beautifully written with well-drawn characters, this is a high class psychological thriller that both thrills and entertains in equal measures.

Highly recommended.

This novel is gripping from the start! The more Joe investigates the further the fall from grace for his seemingly perfect parents, the twists are unpredictable and saw me reading long into the night. I also loved that the book wasn't entirely focused on the investigation you got to experience Joe's personal struggles as he tried to balance finding out the truth as well as keeping himself and his daughters safe. Shamefully this is the first Robotham book I've read but it certainly won't be the last.

Thanks to Netgalley and the Little Brown Book Group for sending me this in exchange for an open and honest review.

No-one is immune to life-changing events. Authors certainly aren't exempt, so it's no surprise that the concerns over personal and family issues often find their way into their work, particularly if you are writing a long-running series with a central character. Perhaps it's inevitable then, but Robotham's latest Joseph O'Loughlin thriller is showing signs of age, or rather showing concerns about aging and coming to terms with the past.

Criminal psychologist Joe O'Loughlin certainly hasn't been immune from life-changing events. His Parkinson's Disease has been progressively worsening over 13 years and is controlled only by medication; his wife Julianne died 16 months previously from a blood clot; and his two teenage children are finding it difficult to come to terms with the loss of their mother, the youngest girl Emma still in a stage of denial which is manifesting in irrational behaviour and causing her problems at school. On top of all this, Joe is now hit with an even bigger family problem; his father William - a retired but well-known and respected surgeon - has been found at the foot of the stairs with his head beaten in and is now in a hospital in a coma.

There's worse to come. His father was found not at home but in an unfamiliar house, and when Joe rushes to visit him in hospital he is confronted with another shock. There is a woman at William's bedside who is not his mother, who claims to be his father's "other wife". Joe's immediate reaction is to be suspicious of the other woman, since the idea of his respectable father, who has to all appearances been in a very stable marriage to his mother for 60 years, leading a double life with another family is simply absurd. His suspicion isn't allayed by the facts that Olivia Blackmore presents to him, but it soon turns to anger as Joe confronts the reality that his father was never the man he thought he was, and that his whole past has been a lie.

Revisiting the past and looking at it in a new light is very much central to Robotham's The Other Wife. O'Loughlin's search to find who attacked his father - carried out unofficially with the collaboration of old friend, retired policeman Vincent Ruiz adding welcome spice to the mix whenever he appears, much to the annoyance of the investigating officers - turns up many further surprises about his father's past and points to him being involved in some very dubious financial affairs. It also brings Joe back into contact with old family friends that causes Joe to reflect on time and how people change. Once great forces are now older, weaker, divorced and remarried to younger women, abandoning old ideals as the world itself changes, presenting a world that no longer conforms to a Waltons or Little House on the Prairie view of family life that Joe may have embraced.

The Other Wife sees Robotham on a different register from his previous book, The Secrets She Keeps. Rather surprisingly it does initially seem to present a trashy bestseller soap-like view of the world, with constant shocks and revelations, with incredible twists of events following in a rolling succession of overheated drama. It's not that the human behaviours aren't real - Robotham is far too good a writer not to keep things grounded in reality - it's just that it feels pushed a little too far into melodrama, with all these secrets that have been kept hidden for so long suddenly tumbling out into the open, all of this on top of the traumatic events that Joe O'Loughlin has to deal with in his family life and in his career treating even more troubled individuals.

Some of those characters appear here, initially in what looks like caricatures, but it soon becomes apparent too that they have real backgrounds where they have been unfairly dealt with by the system. It's in such details that Robotham brings greater depth to the novel and some thoughtful consideration on how the past can't be changed, but how people can perhaps find a way towards redemption. The Other Wife starts out flying then and somehow continues to gather momentum as further extreme events occur - Robotham never short-changes the reader for thrills and revelations - but it is blended in with ordinary domestic events than might not appear life-changing, but they also acquire significance and depth. There's a bigger picture here, there are people's lives involved, and Robotham brings it all together brilliantly.

Excellent story line which was gripping from start to finish. Great characters. I would highly recommend this book.

Michael Robotham has always been one of my favourite authors so I was thrilled to be given a copy of his latest novel to review.

Although I found the story enjoyable and intriguing I did feel that it involved his personal family too much and lacked the suspense of his earlier novels. May I say I did think his early description of London was beautifully described ...until the layers of history are like sediments of rock.... superb

m a huge huge fan of this series and the engaging beautifully drawn character of Joe O’Loughlin so I was very much looking forward to entering his world once again.

This story hits very close to home when Joe discovers dark secrets lurk at the heart of his own family. Add murder into the mix and you have a tense, addictive psychological thriller that explores the deeper truths hiding behind every family facade.

Michael Robotham twists a plot so beautifully, The Other Wife is immediately engaging and highly addictive. I think it will work best if you know Joe and something of what he goes through in previous books but this can easily be read as a standalone also.

I love the unpredictable nature of this authors storytelling, each time both in his series fiction and his standalone novels he brings something new to the table.

Great writing, great characters, The Other Wife, like the books that came before it, is a wonderfully immersive read and a right old page turner.

Highly recommended.

Firstly thanks to Little Brown Book Group UK and Netgalley for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. This review will be posted on Goodreads and Amazon closer to publication date

I had not come across this author before so therefore knew nothing about Joe but it didn't detract from my enjoyment of this book at all but did encourage me to buy more from this series

A cleverly written book with lots of twists and turns that will leave the reader guessing up to the end. As well as being a thriller I enjoyed the human interest side of the story, Joe's interaction with his daughters, and the interesting character that is Emma

This book is well worth reading long into the night. Enjoy