What happens when you have a husband who is the ultimate philanderer and a wife who just lets him get away with it?

While I typically LOVE Kevin O'Brien's books, this one felt like it was missing something. There were definitely twists and turns. But I think the fact that husband was such a wimp and too willing to hop into the sack with other women turned me off. There were crazy and evil characters, which is characteristic of the author's books. And you will be left guessing you is behind all of chaos that is wreaking havoc on Sheila and her family.

And the end of the book just left me with my jaw hanging down in shock. Not sure I really liked the ending, but it was one of those shocking end-of-the-book moments.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read and ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Wow! Extremely suspenseful and brilliant story! The characters were well written and had me feeling all kinds of emotions for each one that I wasn't sure where I stood with many of them. I have loved all of the books by Kevin that I have read and am looking forward to his future stories.

Alrighty then *Cracks knuckles* Let's do this!

I don't even know where to begin. I'll give you a very brief synopsis of the story:

Sheila and Dylan are married with three children. Sheila has been getting stalked by a disheveled young man and his Goth-like girlfriend. Sheila even discovers the pair in her house and finds out that this young lady, Eden, is Dylan's illegitimate daughter that he never knew about. Her mother, Antonia, recently died and having no other family she decides to come home to her Daddy. Surprise!!! 🎈🌟💥

I need to be honest and tell you all that this book pissed me right off.

The death of Antonia was such a huge eye roll for me. I mean COME ON!!! Of course she dies topless while tanning her perfect tight little body with perky tits on display. (At this point I went to see who the author of this book is and was totally not surprised that this was a man. Sorry, not sorry.) This party animal beds men after men or at least that is how the author describes her. So many men a person could hardly keep track. A real slut, ya know! Oh, and she's a terrible mother because, well, she's a slut that likes to party. Right-o, Mr. O'Brien - we get it!

Dylan, Dylan, Dylan - you sorry sack of shit. He has cheated on his wife Sheila about a gazillion times. He can't help it if woman throw themselves at him. He is handsome and charming and women simply can't keep their panties on when he's around. A real curse to be had! Then he meets Brook at the gym and after a 10 minute conversation he thinks he's in LOVE and will now do anything to steal away anytime he can with her including abandoning his wife and children! So irresistible! *swoons*

BARF.

Sheila, you seem like a nice lady, but it's time to put on your big girl pants and kick this douche to the curb. I'm tired of hearing your excuses....well he's a good Dad and he does always come home to me in the end. How immensely satisfying that must be for you. It's not his fault that he is so gorgeous. You're lucky to have him.

So in summation the women in the this book are either sluts, nymphomaniacs, psychotic, or just total sad sacks and, really, isn't it Dylan who we need to feel sorry for here? Poor guy really got himself into a jam this time. Boys will be boys, ya know.

This book was at least 100 pages too long. The ending left much to be desired. Seriously, Sheila, when will you fucking learn?

Pro's: I liked Steve their teenage son. That's it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Great read. The author wrote a story that was interesting and moved at a pace that kept me engaged. The characters were easy to invest in.

Happy pub day to this gem - The Betrayed Wife by Kevin O’Brein. I was given an early copy to read and review!

I loved this book! Such a great twisty story with some very unlikeable characters. Really I found Dylan (the husband character) to be such a disgusting human being and Shelia (the wife) not too far behind him really - but in a different way!

This was a page turner and the ending was...well a bit confusing for me / although somewhat satisfying! It just got a bit muddled towards the end for me! 🤷‍♀️

Overall I love this author and this one is no exception. 3.5 solid thriller read for me! Check it out & realize how your own family isn’t really that bad after all!

Thanks to NetGalley and the author as well as publisher for this early copy! I enjoyed it!

Fast paced highly pyschlogical thriller with this book! Kevin O'Brien just keeps getting better and better. This book was so messed up on so many levels! So many twists and turns! The last page of the epilogue was the best part! Now I'm left wondering...

#TheBetrayedWife#NetGalley

Sheila O'Rourk, whose marriage has always been rocky, discovers after seventeen years of marriage that Dylan, her unfaithful cad of a husband, has a sixteen year old daughter, Eden, by another woman!
Eden's mother recently died under mysterious circumstances, leaving Eden homeless. Out of the blue, Eden shows up at the O'Rourk home and announces to Dylan that he is her father. Having no prior knowledge of this mysterious daughter, Dylan orders DNA testing. When confirmed that Eden is truly his daughter, he and Shelia agree to take her into their home. Immediate problems arise when their other three children are confronted with a new member of the family! To add to this, Eden soon proves to be a very difficult house guest!!

Sheila's' life begins to deteriorate as she suddenly begins to receive strange and anonymous text messages, notices unsettling noises from the house next door, and has the eerie feeling that she is being followed and watched. To make matters worse, she begins to realize that the frequent near fatal "accidents" she is experiencing aren't really accidental. Acknowledging that someone is attempting to take her life, she doesn't know who to trust or where to turn. The big question is who wants Shelia dead?? There are many red herrings in the book to cause the reader to be unable to decide on the identity of the bad guy. As I rushed through many twists and turns, I was surprised several times when I thought I had it all figured out! The ending turned out to be a huge shocker to me!!!

Those who love suspenseful, twisty thrills will race through this book! Best selling author, Kevin O'Brian, has always been one of my go to authors, and he certainly didn't disappoint in this new novel. The Betrayed Wife, published by Kensington Books, will be out on the shelves on July 30, 2019. I highly recommend this book and give it a 5 Star rating. A fast paced plot, characters who are well developed, and a great story line! What more could you want??

Thanks to the publishers and to NetGalley for my advanced copy. The opinions expressed in this review are my own.

I would like to thank Netgalley Kevin O'Brien and Kensington Books/Pinnacle for this arc.
This is the first time I have read anything by Kevin O'Brien and it won't be the last. I could not put this book down until I finished it. Very suspenseful. Although I guessed the twist it did not ruin the enjoyment of the story for me.
Four stars from me.

This was a hard to put down mystery. Every time I thought I had it figured out there was another twist. Sheila was easy to connect with. Her husband Dylan was hard to like. All through the book someone was messing with Sheila. Cuting her brake line, destroying her flower garden. At first she thinks its her new step-daughter.Than the new neighbor. She is not sure who she just knows someone wants to hurt her or worse. This book had me on the edge of my seat. Loved it. I want to thank NetGalley for the chance to read this amazing book for an honest opinion.

The Betrayed Wife
by
Kevin O'Brien (Goodreads Author)


THE PERFECT FAMILY
Sheila O’Rourke has always known her husband isn’t perfect. Who is? But things have been better since they moved to Seattle to make a fresh start. So much so that when sixteen-year-old Eden turns up, claiming to be Dylan’s child by another woman, Sheila tries to be welcoming.

CAN BECOME
At first, Sheila feels sympathy for the girl. Eden’s mother recently fell to her death in an incident with unsettling parallels to Sheila’s past. Still, Eden is a difficult house guest, sowing discord among the family. Sheila has already been on edge for weeks, receiving anonymous texts, noticing odd noises coming from the house next door. And that’s just the start.

A PERFECT NIGHTMARE
Sheila wants to trust Dylan. She wants to feel safe in her own home. But no one can hurt you more easily than the ones closest to you . . . the ones you keep believing until it’s too late.
Kindle Edition, 544 pages
Expected publication: July 30th 2019 by Pinnacle

***

4.5 Stars

This book starts out showing the death of Antonia. She is thrown naked from the roof of her apartment building and her daughter, Eden is sent to live with her father, Dylan O'Roarke. He had a fling with Toni sixteen years earlier. And his string of discarded women is immense. Needless to say, some of these women come with a lot of baggage.

Before Eden comes to live with them, she and her boyfriend Brodie start tormenting Dylan's wife Sheila. And then the trouble starts getting worse and worse for Sheila. Someone puts Visine in her cranberry juice and sets the dryer to give her a lethal shock. Then she finds glass ground in one of her liquor bottles. And Sheila vows to get to the bottom of these schemes but the situation continues to get worse.

The author really had me fooled. I take everything at face value so when the person who was really behind the gas lighting of Sheila was revealed, I was shocked. Good show, Kevin O'Brien! This novel disturbed me because this sort of thing could happen to any of us.

Highly recommended.

I want to thank NetGalley, the author and the publisher for allowing me to read this title in return for an honest review.

Sheila knows something is wrong, someone is watching her, someone is tampering with her car, the washing machine, and the garden did not just self destruct.

Dylan, although father of four, is a player. As the story progresses, one realises just how much of a player he is. He cannot walk past a woman without wanting to sleep with her.
Sheila is an extremely forgiving wife.

So why is somebody trying to kill her?

Very well written, at one point I felt like yelling at Dylan - it wasn't something nice either. Excellent book, I hope a cheating husband reads this... If this doesn't chill you to the bone, I don't know what would!

It's Fatal Attraction on steroids...

Thank you Netgalley and the author for allowing me to read this book. I try to review every book I read.

A leapord does not change its spots, and neither does an infidel husband. I have to be honest here, Dylan was the most horrible of husbands. He was only busy trying to find the next woman to score with. To think he had grown up children along with an illegitimate one who popped up suddenly into their family life. You would think he would then find his shame.... Noooo he found the next woman... But someone was killing these women too... What would the wife Sheila do now? Or was she the killer?

My first book by Kevin O'Brien, and it was obvious the author had gone all out to make this book filled with highs and lows of a thriller. Just when I thought I knew the husband, he proved to me how low he could get, all for the next conquest. I liked his characterization as I could hate him pretty much throughout the book.

Ah now the wife, she was portrayed well by the author, a woman who lived with the man and forgave him for the multitude of affairs. Though I wasn't quite sure why an independent woman would, especially when the children had grown up. Ah well, to each his/her own.

The murders brought their own excitement, but as the wife investigated deeper into husband's past, I could guess the killer. I actually shut my brain to read this book. I wouldn't say I loved the book, but it was something I couldn't move away from. I had to know if the lying, rotten husband would get drawn and quartered. So to me, it was a fun thriller.

This book was a whole mess. The husband literally slips his business into any female that looks his way, the wife knows about it and she just takes it. She is literally being stalked by someone, but instead of blaming any of the 456431234896323 women her husband is sleeping with, she immediately blames his daughter (from an affair that he conveniently never knew about, of course). So people are dying, the main character has a secret, and dude is just a complete tool. Honestly I hated all the characters in this book. Women were literally just holes to this guy, except for the woman he "loved" after seeing her for five minutes at the gym. And they're all STUPID. He's "hot" so they're all willing to ruin their lives (or end others') to be able to be with him, even though HIS WIFE WON'T LEAVE HIM. After all this, she still says she's going to stay with him, for the kids. I. Can't. Honestly I was just hoping someone was going to Lorena Bobbitt him so that the book would just end. Ugh.

A perfect family may not be so perfect, with a husband that cheats and a wife who just been accepting of it for so many years. When something traggic happens in their old home town brings some things to light that they never knew. Mystery texts received with hints of a hidden past turns their world upside down!

This were so many OMG and WTF moments through out this book! Making me not want to put the book down until I finished! Fantastic Book!

Ugh this book! So many great twists and suspenseful moments- I even had to close the book twice because I was freaking myself out! But then, there are holes in the plot and a sense of ‘unbelievability’ that left me wanting...more.
So I’ll give it a four because I loved that feeling of thinking I had it figured it out when I didn’t, even when other parts of the story were definitely in three star territory.
While- obviously- I didn’t absolutely love this book, it has made me want to check out other books by this author.

A really gripping and exciting domestic noir. I really enjoyed this story and was very well written with a very likeable main character who I found myself rooting for. Creepy and mysterious x

▪️#partner| Thank you to NetGalley, Kensington Books, Pinnacle & Kevin O’Brien for the free advanced digital copy! This book is available July 30th!
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🌟BOOK REVIEW🌟
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▪️MY THOUGHTS
✔️This book was WOW!! 🤯 I didn’t want to stop reading! It had me hooked from the first page! It was exciting, unbelievable & shocking. It dealt with adultery & murder and was definitely a thriller that made me second guess a lot of things! I loved to hate Dylan and just found my hate for him grow more and more throughout the book.
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▪️OVERALL RUNDOWN
✔️I thought this book was great. A about the 80% mark I had a theory but then ended up being wrong which I absolutely loved! The story was told from almost every character’s perspective - it was so great!! I’m still pondering the ending and what I think it all means but that’s the beauty of these fast paced thrillers. I can’t wait to read more from this author!
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▪️TITLE RUNDOWN
Betrayal
Exciting
Terrorized
Rage
Angry
Yelling
Eventful
Daring
Wild
Interesting
Furious
Evil
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▪️STAR RATING
✔️🌟🌟🌟🌟/5

I have never read this author before, and I was very pleasantly surprised at how much i enjoyed this story. This was filled with so many secrets, twists, some stalking and it would or will be so good to listen to when the audio is ready.

What an amazing novel! The character development was incredible, the story line flowed seamlessly and I was captivated the whole time. Highly recommended!

Sheila O’Routke has always been a little “ high- strung” so when a series of odd accidents occur she notices a creepy guy who seeks to be following her. She had noticed him and his equally creepy girlfriend a few weeks ago so it is quite a shock when they show up in her house and she learns that the girl is Her husbands illegitimate daughter, Eden who is 16 and needs her father.
Sheila is furious with Dylan her husband but feels some sympathy for Eden while not trusting her.
Sheila keeps having accidents, receiving strange , anonymous texts and odd noises in her house. Are her suspicions that Eden is responsible correct?

This is a real page turner that kept me guessing though I didn’t like the characters. Dylan is a womanizing cad and Sheila comes across as helpless and willing to tolerate anything because he is a “ good provider”. We don’t really get to know any of the children except Stevie who is a sweetheart and deserves better role models and parents not so selfishly self involved.
As other reviews have noted, the ending sucked but leads us to think there will be a sequel.
As always, Kevin O'Brien has written a really good story.
Thanks to #netgalley and #kensingtonbooks for the advance copy in exchange for a review.