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The Hunting Wives

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Member Reviews

Say hello to my last read that I could not put down! It was so fun and instantly pulled me into the antics of a group of bored housewives looking to have a little Friday night fun.

The story was wildly entertaining for me, and seductive in just the right way. I feel like this would make for a great tv series!

*many thanks to Berkley and Netgalley for the gifted copy

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I was looking for a fun thriller and got exactly that. I thoroughly enjoyed this one and look forward to more from May Cobb.

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If you want to read a book with a bunch of unlikeable selfish women that you can’t put down because you want to know what more trouble these women will stir up next then pick this one up.

This group of women hang out every Friday night to drink, flirt though they’re married and shoot guns. All is just crazy and wild fun until the newest member is framed for the murder of a young girl.

This one you can easily binge read on a weekend. It’s a fast paced thriller with family drama, lots of questionable behavior that’ll keep you entertained for a few hours.

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Hmm...I’m torn on how to rate The Hunting Wives by May Cobb. On the one hand, I could not stand the protagonist and her stupid decisions. Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never experienced lust at such a level that I would destroy my whole life because of it. At first I enjoyed the ‘Single White Female’ vibe, but then Sophie’s obsession with Margot just became frustrating. On the other hand, the suspense took off about halfway through the book and I was very invested in how it would all end. Nothing seemed too far fetched and the conclusion was satisfying. With all that considered, I guess I’ll give this one 3.5 stars. If you can get past the first half, the second half will make it all worth it.

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This one is so juicy, thrilling, and filled with drama. I just loved it!! What a fantastic summer read - perfect for the beach!

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This book was my best read of this year so far! This had everything I love in it! It has a suburban town, money, Richie’s, Lake life, family, husbands, and drama. The friendships between these ladies was like no other! It did remind me a little bit of big little lies but I think I like this book even better! I would love it if this were turned into a movie. If there is one book he read this year let it be this one! There were twists and turns every few chapters. It kept me on the edge of my seat until the very end! I absolutely adore this book.

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What a roller coaster of a read! This book follows a group of high society women called The Hunting Wives. They are involved in racy extra-curricular activities that noone knows about. When a teenage girl turns up dead, there are too many suspects to count. Was it jealousy that forced a socialite to killer her competition? Was it the jealous mother who wanted her out of the way? Or was it the new socialite in town who has feelings for her new found bestie? Cobb writes an exciting thriller with twists at every turn.

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This book was a wild ride and captivated me from the beginning. The characters were difficult to like but the plot was exquisite. I devoured this in a few days because I became so invested in what was going to happen as events unfolded. If you are looking for a chair gripper suspenseful thriller, this is the book for you. I enjoyed it very much overall.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for the e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

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I'm just gonna say it: I didn't like any of these characters. Okay, maybe Sophie's husband, but he was a little too perfect. The Hunting Wives, though, I couldn't stand a single one of them - but I couldn't stop reading about them either. The thing is I went into this book thinking I knew what I was getting. I expected a domestic drama with a bunch of bored housewives, and I suppose I got that to an extent. But that's a really simplistic view of this one. The Hunting Wives is about a group of bored housewives, but these housewives are something else. There is drama - oh yeah, this one has drama in spades, but it's more than that too. May Cobb pulled me into the drama from the very beginning, and she definitely knows her stuff when it comes to building tension. I realize I'm being vague, and it's entirely intentional because this one really needs to be read spoiler-free. I would say this is a page-turner, but it's more like a page burner because this story is on fire. It's provocative, shocking, even maddening - these women are an exercise in frustration, especially Sophie, but the more I read, the more I wanted to read. It doesn't happen often that I find myself rooting for characters to get their comeuppance instead of their happy ending, but darned if it wasn't a blast getting to the point of seeing how everything would come out. If this one isn't one of the most talked-about summer reads this year, I'll be shocked. so, grab it up and soak it up because it's a definite must-read.

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This fast-paced, fun, beachy read about rich housewives behaving badly reminded me a lot of a grown-up Mean Girls, but with much higher stakes. I could not put the book down, and while I hated almost all of the characters and found myself often getting frustrated with the protagonist for continuously making awful, awful, decisions, I could not stop reading it to see what this group would do next.

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Drama! Real Housewives in a book format.

I don't even know where to begin. There was a bit of an obsession story, with rich housewives that are bored out of their minds and their relationships. They have this club where they go shooting guns and a lot of drinking. The newest member, Sophie gets pulled into this lifestyle and secret club, and gets involved with all the secrets behind it.

With Sophie getting deeper and deeper into this secret filled lifestyle, it felt like watching a car going too fast and about to crash. With all the bad choices and decisions I couldn't stop turning the pages to see how it will all end.

Fast paced, entertaining, drama filled and seriously oh so wrong on so many levels, but oh so good. Definitely a great summer read that needs to watch someone else's life crash.

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Juicy and salicious, I couldn't get enough of these spoiled rich ladies behaving badly! Perfect guilty pleasure reading.

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Small town, suburban moms behaving badly - very badly! ⁣

This book was sinfully fun! We have the kind of rich, bored, self-centered, mean girl housewives you just love to hate. When Sophie gets invited to join the clique of wives for their Friday night “hunting” - I was not prepared for the type of hunting they did or just how reckless these women were willing to get for a good time. ⁣

Their shenanigans start to go awry when a body is found on the property where their hold their hunting club meetings. Things got juicy and I was all in as the friend drama builds and some of the women seem to be making more and more over the top, “questionable” choices. ⁣ Reading this book is like being in on the kind of salacious gossip that you can’t stop listening to. These women were conniving, selfish and scandalous. Definitely not the type of friends I’d want to have in my life unless you live by the old adage to “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”! ⁣

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I will be honest, I did not love this book. Centering around a group of well to do women who gather together every Friday night to go "hunting," Sophie is new in town and dying to make friends with them. But what she doesn't realize is that "hunting" has a completely different meaning than she thinks it does.

The premise is good, but there's a huge plotline around an adult woman having a sexual relationship with an underage boy, and I'm just not capable of reading about when it's written about in such a casual way. Not for me.

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THE HUNTING WIVES • May Cobb • Pub Date: May 18, 2021 • ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Group for this eARC in exchange for an honest review. This is the summer thriller we have been waiting for, y’all! 👏🏼

Were you a fan of Desperate Housewives? Is reality TV one of your guilty pleasures? If you answered yes to either of those questions — you’re going to LOVE this book. It is equal parts scandalous and ridiculous, creating a heady combination that is all parts bingeable.

With a glass of wine in one hand and a shotgun in the other, these salacious women are on the hunt. But exactly what for? 🤔 Add a murder to the mix, and you’ve got a deliciously messy page turner. Best enjoyed by the pool, paired with your favorite drink.

I had fun with this book. It doesn’t try to be something it’s not. The author just lets you enjoy the chaos, and I loved it!

Quick Content Warning: The plot of this book features high school boys hovering around the age of 18 being seduced by women in their 30s. Scandalous? Oh yeah. Inappropriate? Absolutely, but also pretty on brand. I grew up in a community where rumors of wealthy, bored housewives getting with high school seniors were not uncommon. But if this is something you find hard to stomach, this book may not be for you.

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If you love fast paced,  crazy suspenseful, steamy thrillers then you need to get a copy.

I absolutely loved The Hunting Wives, I was immediately sucked into the story and completely devoured the book because I needed to know what crazy antics these women were going to get up to next.

In The Hunting Wives we follow Sophie who is thrilled when she gets invited into the group of Wives she's been following on social media.  But what she didn't know was ultimately how this group would completely destroy her.  What started as a way to let off steam and socially interact with eachother quickly takes a turn when a local teenager goes missing and turns up dead.  The wives are all questioned and everyone seems to be turning on one another and hiding secrets.

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If you're looking for a fast paced overly dramatic thriller, this is the one. Think Real Housewives of Texas with guns, lots and lots of booze, and not a single likeable main character. And of course just a smidge of murder.

Despite not really caring for any of the characters, and at times the plot was just a bit too much for me, I couldn't look away. It was one of those that you just have to know what effed up way it's going to end.

3/5⭐️

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An incredibly fun and exciting domestic thriller, with parts that will make most readers blush at least once, May Cobb’s The Hunting Wives is a bold and unpredictable ride through friendships, secrets, red flags, parties, seduction, and murder.

Ready for a slower pace in life, Sophie and her husband and young son leave the Chicago area and move to a town in East Texas. Sophie had lived a rather nomadic life in her childhood and fondly remembered spending part of her high school years in Mapleton, Texas, so that is where they decide to settle.

While everything starts out as pure bliss, it does not take long for the slower pace of life to start seeming a bit too slow. Her husband seems happy and successful in his new job, but Sophie feels unmoored and frustrated. In an effort to relieve what she thinks might just be boredom, Sophie sets her sights on what is basically a grown-up version of the “popular girls” clique that everyone can recognise or remember from high school. These women, however, are up to much, much more than just drinking wine and sitting around the pool and Sophie quickly finds herself immersed in a world that is half soap opera and half Real Housewives.

Knowing that the secrets she has been keeping from her husband are putting a severe strain on her marriage, Sophie realises she needs to pull away from this group of unhinged women, but her obsession with the undisputed “Queen Bee” of the group, Margot Banks, has gotten completely out of control. When it comes to Margot, Sophie’s better judgment is nowhere to be found.

When a young woman’s dead body is found in the same location where the group gets together each week, everything in Sophie’s world is turned completely upside down!

Cobb’s thriller reads like a show that you just can’t stop binge-watching. With its perfect blend of excitement, fun, humour, and sex, it is impossible to put down. Page after page flies by as the reader, just like Sophie, gets pulled (willingly, of course) deeper and deeper into the web that Cobb has woven.

While it is possibly not the right book choice for readers who prefer only likeable characters, (there will be times when almost every reader will want to scream at some of these characters), but that does not make The Hunting Wives any less irresistible!

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I could review this book in two words: salacious thriller.
I found the opening of the novel to be slow- it jumped around in time a little bit and so many women were introduced that I had some trouble keeping them straight. However, the last third to quarter made up for the slow start as I could not put it down.

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Having decided the seeming idyllic life in small town Texas is what she wants for her and her family, Sophie now finds herself less interested in growing her lifestyle blog, and more intrigued by finding a way into the elite company of women who call themselves The Hunting Wives. Obsession, desire, and illicit activities soon have Sophie completely ensnared...and that's all before the murder occurs.

Cobb has done an excellent job of creating a story thick with atmosphere: lake houses and endless glasses of wine and seedy clubs and four wheelers driving towards a secret shooting range.

It's the characters themselves I really struggled with. That they are deeply flawed, frustrating, and sometimes completely unlikable makes complete sense within the story and world Cobb has created, but that also meant I was reading about characters I did not like and/or just plain wanted to scream at for the choices they were making.

The ending twist was a really great one, and caught me completely by surprise, and I appreciate that Cobb went for it with darker themes and tones. I just personally tend to struggle with books where I essentially can't stand anybody I'm reading about.

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