I’ve tried a few of Sally Helworth’s books and I’m just not a fan. They’re a bit too tame and watered down. Too much description and not enough action. Good story overall but just not a favorite.

Sally Hepworth's books always have fascinating family dynamics, fully-developed characters, and a bit of a mystery. This one was no different. This fast-paced, engaging read tells the story of the Aston family, largely through the point of view of the daughters and their father's new fiancee, after something shocking happens at the father's wedding.

I did not love the ending, but the rest of the book was excellent.

Many thanks to the publisher, St. Martin's, and NetGalley, for the advance copy.

Sally Hepworth is one of my favorite authors. sadly, this wasn’t one of my favorite books of hers. There was a lot less suspense/thriller than I expected and a lot more cheesiness.

The Younger Wife
I love Sally Hepworth's books and while I was engaged in this one, it's not my favorite of hers overall. I usually love her domestic mysteries and it didn't have that normal Sally feel like her others. I found the characters tough to root for and borderline unlikable. The ending left too many questions for me and I had some unresolved issues with this story. Thank you so much for the arc!

Another fabulous book by Sally Hepworth! It kept me on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what was going on.

Sally Hepworth is becoming one of my favorite authors! I was in a bit of a reading slump and The Younger Wife pulled me right out. The novel follows a family that has been impacted by dementia. Mom is in a group home and dad is ready to get married again. There are so many twists and turns here that I was guessing right until the end. Even afterward, I had to discuss this with others who had read it. So much to unpack! Highly recommend for a great suspenseful read.

The Younger Wife grabbed me on page 1 and quickly turned into a 2 day read. It's a suspenseful novel filled to the brim with messy family dynamics, distressing neuroses and heartbreaking situations. And yes, I enjoyed every minute spent reading it. I especially appreciated the author's note at the end that explains the inspiration for the book. I can't wait for Hepworth's next book!
Thanks to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read The Younger Wife.

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth was superb! It was an interesting story line, and I haven't read many similar to it. Throughout the entire story, I had to keep wondering who is the real Stephen Aston? Does his (ex) wife really have Alzheimer's? I knew there would be a twist, and I patiently waited until Hepworth revealed it. Totally worth the wait! The end still left me guessing, which normally irritates me, but it really worked with this plot! This is one of the better books I've read lately. Glad I got the chance!

What an explosive family drama novel! It opens with a wedding ending in a candlestick to the head of someone - who - we don't know yet - and goes through all the back stories of Steven, his wife Pam who has dementia, his two daughters and his new younger wife.
What is exposed is raw, powerful, and so twisty I did not see it coming.
I loved this book and am so glad I kicked off 2022 with this thrill ride!
Five stars and thankful for the ARC

This book just genuinely made me angry. So much build up so many questions just to be left hanging with no freaking answers! Why did I bother sticking it out! So frustrating! Not worth it.

The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth
I’ve been reading SH for quite a while now and her books never disappoint!!!
-amazing characters
-relatable and believable storylines
-just enough drama and mystery to keep you guessing
This book lived up to all of these!!
Heather, a young 30 something, is marrying Stephen, a much older, rich physician. Rachel and Tully, Stephen’s older daughters, are less than pleased, but they put their fakest smiles on and try to accept Heather. To add a fun twist to the story, the girls’ mother, Pam, is still very much alive and is still married to Stephen!!! Pam has dementia and is currently living in a treatment center.
Incident after incident keep happening leading up to the wedding, and it’s making all of the girls question what is going and who is behind all of it? Is Stephen truly the upstanding man he appears to be or is there more behind his perfect demeanor??
Overall this was a great book that kept me guessing right up until the very end!!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This one follows the lives of three women - sisters - Tully and Rachel and their soon to be stepmother - Heather. Each of these women are flawed and have secrets in their past which can mess their lives if they did come out. There is a wedding and then there is a death right away, there is so much drama leading to the wedding and even after the wedding that it keeps the readers hooked. And the groom, Stephen's character is really confusing, is he a good guy or is he trouble? Just when I thought I had it all figured out, the author ends a bit vaguely that leaves us with questions. I liked the ending as it will remain as the plot that confused me at the end. I wasn't necessarily satisfied by the ending but it was different.

Another reliably engrossing page turner from Sally Hepworth. Although this didn't have the totally loveable vibes of The Good Sister, this is a compelling family drama that also features sisters and has a mystery at its heart that keeps you turning the pages. I appreciated the way Hepworth delved into issues such as a dementia, kleptomania, and family trauma and admire how she can write about these things seriously without having the novel feel weighty or too dark. The resolutions were a bit too quick to be completely believable, but I come to Hepworth not for realism but for her witty and perceptive depictions of parenting, marriage and family relationships. All in all a good read.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Sally Hepworth, and NetGalley for the advanced copy of The Younger Wife! All opinions in this review are my own.

Well, Sally Hepworth has done it again. I was in a terrible reading slump before picking up The Younger Wife. Much like The Mother-In-Law, I couldn't stop reading The Younger Wife because I just had to know what happened in the opening scene of the book!

Stephen is getting married again. While his adult daughters, Rachel and Tully are struggling with him divorcing their mom, who is in a home for people with advanced dementia, they meet his new wife-to-be, Heather. Heather is the same age as Rachel and even younger than Tully so the daughters are immediately wary of her intentions. As Rachel and Tully begin to uncover family secrets, and share some of their own, everyone begins to reveal their true colors.

The structure of The Younger Wife is what kept me hooked. I love that it starts with a mysterious event at the wedding and then jumps back in time to show what led up to it. It is also told in alternating viewpoints between Rachel, Tully, and Heather, which not only helps develop each woman's individual story, but also helps to throw doubt on which characters are telling the truth.

Told from several different viewpoints, The Younger Wife is a domestic suspense/family drama that follows two sisters whose father is set to marry a younger woman while their mother battles dementia.  There are flashbacks to the wedding and a tragedy that occurred during it. The story is told from the months before the wedding happened and there is a lot of drama and family issues that are weaved into this book. A good solid read that keeps you guessing until the end and worth picking up in April when it releases.  Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC.

absolutely loved this book and kept me excited to keep
Reading. Will read more from this author
Thank you

Well, Sally has done it again! I’ve read almost all of her books and they get better with each one, although they’re all very good reads. This one was especially fast-paced and kept me from wanting to put it down. I enjoyed each of the characters, all of whom had their own quirks and fascinating traits. I’m thankful to Net Galley for the advanced copy to read and review. It’s another five star Sally read for me! I highly recommend you read when it is released in the spring.

I am really loving Hepworth’s books lately, they are character dramas that build from the beginning and culminate in page turning endings that I absolutely devour. She has a way of endearing you to each of the characters, even the ones you are supposed to be against, and then at the end she flips your world upside down in the very best way. She did not disappoint with The Younger Wife, which is my third read of hers. Tully and Rachel Aston are adult sisters who are dealing with losing their mother to dementia, and perhaps some relationship issues of their own but all is fairly manageable. That is until their dad tells them at lunch he is getting married to Heather. What’s the big deal? She’s their age, oh and he is still married to their mother. But don’t worry, he is planning on divorcing her, dementia and all so nbd.

Tully and Rachel see Heather as a gold digger, basically up to no good other than being after their dad’s money. But there are secrets aplenty, and as the wedding draws near, the sisters are determined to get to the root of it all, including who their father really is.

This was an absolutely brilliant book, with a prologue that starts off with a bang, backtracks to the day the sisters learn about Heather, and builds to an absolutely fantastic ending. I loved the relationship between Tully and Rachel, they are not perfect and it shows in their relationship, but they are definitely there for each other and it was so great to see. I also loved how they tried to approach this entire situation as objectively as they possibly could, which would not be easy but was crucial. Heather was also written very well, she had quite the backstory and I enjoyed how it played into the overall narrative.

Pub date is April 5th and you definitely want this one on your reading list when it arrives! Thank you to @NetGalley and @stmartinspress for the advanced digital copy to review.

I really struggled with rating The Younger Wife. I read this in two days and couldn't put it down. Once I started I stayed up late to keep reading and just needed to know how it ended. Unfortunately the ending was really disappointing to me. I felt like the whole book until the last 20% was 5 stars but the ending dragged down my rating to 3 stars.

I am a fan of Sally Hepworth and enjoyed The Mother in Law and The Good Sister a lot. I was really excited to be approved to receive an advance copy of her latest thriller but it really missed the mark for me. The Younger Wife is told from 4 different perspectives. It starts from the perspective of an unknown wedding guest at a wedding in the future. Then it rotates between Tully and Rachel, who are sisters, and Heather the younger woman their father has recently started dating showing different points in time before the wedding. Tully and Rachel's mother has advanced dementia and their father, Stephen, leaves her for Heather. The unknown wedding guest is later revealed to be someone from the father's past. There are so many strange events that happen in the book and the women begin to think that Stephen may have been abusive. Tully, Rachel and Heather are all struggling with their own internal battles and issues throughout the book as well. I don't want to give any spoiler so I won't say anything else about what happens.

I started reading this and was completely sucked in. I like the rotating perspectives and the mystery of who the wedding guest is. There's flashes forward and backwards that keep the book exciting. There are a lot of secrets and mysteries to be unraveled in this book. I was constantly guessing and felt like I couldn't truly trust any of the narrators. My main critiques of the book are that there was a lot going on in the plot and the ending. The ending and particularly the epilogue really ruined the book for me. The plot is very busy and I felt like a lot of it could've been left out to focus on the main plot point of whether Stephen is abusive or not. I also just really disliked the ending and wanted it to go in a different direction or even be more ambiguous to leave more to the imagination. I can see why others are leaving this good reviews but the ending of a book is always important to me and this ending was very unsatisfactory.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I had a very difficult time grading The Younger Wife. Sally Hepworth’s family-driven suspense novels are always a great read, and The Younger Wife is genuinely surprising, absorbing, and interesting, providing the reader with a satisfying page-turner. But on the other hand, its entire plot hinges on the neurotic presumptions of its main cast, who avoid examining their own issues and decide to allow their father’s secret first ex-wife to basically gaslight them into committing some heinous deeds.  Get a Snickers bar and a bottle of wine, because you’re gonna be up all night with this one.

The neurotic Natalie – Tully - Aston takes one look at the appropriately-named Heather Wisher as she enters the restaurant on her father’s arm and smells blood in the water. The younger woman is engaged to Tully’s father, Stephen – even though Stephen is still married to his dementia-stricken wife, Tully’s mother Pamela.

Stephen’s solution to this issue is simple. He’ll divorce the legally incompetent Pamela - who often steals piles of objects and stows them in her closet, and is currently living in a memory care facility - and marry interior designer Heather.  But Tully thinks Heather is a gold-digger, and Tully’s sister - controlling professional baker Rachel - soon joins her in this presumption. The two sisters team up to drag the skeletons out of Heather’s closet.

But Heather isn’t the one keeping secrets.  Along the way, the three women find their father’s first wife, and begin to suspect that he abused her, was abusing their mother, and may be abusing Heather.  Or is it all in their minds?

The Younger Wife makes a choice not to believe its victims right off the bat.  We learn that Rachel was raped by an unknown assailant,  that Tully’s marriage is difficult and her children are unruly, that their mother is bruised and that Heather is an alcoholic.  Because everyone jumps to conclusions, no one gets to the germane truth.

This is both incredibly annoying and incredibly involving.  Even when The Young Wife annoyed me by suggesting that domestic violence victims lie and women cannot be trusted to recount their own abuse, I was compelled by the unfolding mystery and these lovably unlovable characters.

For romance fans, there’s a side romance between Rachel and a man named Darcy, and Tully’s relationship with her husband Sonny continues throughout the entire novel. How you’ll feel about both Pamela’s relationship with Stephen and Heather’s connection to him will likely be determined by how you feel about who Stephen really is.  And heaven knows how I actually feel about him, after this mindscrew of a novel! Twist upon twist happens, tying itself up into one almost implausible bow.  Part of me wants to mark the book down for its last quarter, but the characters are so human and flawed that of course this is how things turned out for them all.

As angry as The Young Wife made me, I found it utterly, wholly appealing and irresistible.  I spent hours glued to it, and Hepworth’s many fans will likely do the same.

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