The Secret Wife was a great domestic thriller and it kept me up far too late to finish it! The story starts with a father deciding to give his lovely wife a weekend of peace by taking their two young daughters camping. What can go wrong?
The book is tense and twisty. I was very engaged and I thought I had it all figured out but lo and behold I did not.

I got an audio copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I loved the female narrator but some of the voices the male narrator used to portray the female and child character really irritated me. I did pick up a print copy to read along and can totally see myself re-reading this one. It was fast paced and got my nerves on fire!

The Secret Wife was a predictable domestic thriller with mediocre characters. Micheal, the pathological liar, Cara his latest victim. Can she survive his manipulation?

Thank you to NetGalley, Dreamscape Media, and Emily Shiner for the Arc of this fabulous thriller.

Dad takes little girls for a Daddy/Daughter camping weekend and the unthinkable happens….they disappear. Then one turns back up but not the other. It seems that there are some underlying secrets from a seemingly-to-Cara (the wife) a happy marriage. There are many twists and turns and this was one great ride!

This is only my second Emily Shiner book and she is an author I would happily read again. The Secret Wife is a domestic thriller featuring a family of four - mom Cara (with bipolar and a deep devotion to her kids), dad Michael (shady from the get go so this is not a spoiler) and two young sisters, Laura and Olivia.

Wanting Cara to have some alone time as she's the busy bee mom, Michael volunteers to take two very young girls alone on a camping trip. Stop right there - I've raised kids, and have an awesome husband, but my bells went off immediately by any dad wanting to go deep into the woods, off grid, no set plan on campsite, with two very very young kids. Again, this happened immediately so not a spoiler.

Only one daughter returns with dad and the remainder of the novel is an interesting, twisty tale of trust, marriage, secrets and lies. A solid story. Happy to recommend, and more likely to encourage you to read the book rather than listen on audio as I did.

I am a longtime audio book listener, think 1980s, cassette tapes and 15+ cassettes to listen to a book. That said, I have heard a ton of narrators in my life. Sadly, the man and woman who voice The Secret Wife stepped on my nerves throughout the story. I did not like their voice choices, felt the women were presented as childlike and every single time one of the kids spoke I wondered why I ever loved children (former teacher, current mom). They were like chalk on a blackboard. Look that saying up if you are less than 40.

I'd give the story a 4 but rounded down because of the performance.

Thank you to Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for allowing me to listen in exchange for my honest review.

This was pretty original. Great for fans of Shari Lapena’s The Couple Next Door.

We start off knowing that the children will be abducted on a camping trip with their father. A woman is luring them out of their tent to look for a lost puppy. The oldest trick in the book.

Cut to Michael, a successful bank branch manager, and his wife Cara, having a date night. Between bites of spaghetti, they’re discussing his upcoming camping trip. He’s taking the girls and this will be her first real weekend away from them. She is on strict orders to nap, order in, and pamper herself. She is both excited and nervous.

We then learn from Michael, this story is told from husband and wife dual POVs, that he wants a huge family because he lost his as a kid. It is pretty tone deaf since he already isn’t home much and she had a tough pregnancy. They have one daughter together and one is from his previous relationship with his now deceased ex-wife. She loves the child like her own and feels their life is full as is.

Dad and girls arrive at the camping site and figure out the oldest left her stuffed animal at home. Cara found it, and spooked being home alone and missing the fam anyway, she uses it as an excuse to go find them for the night but by the time they meet and make it back to camp , the kids are missing.

Dad is so dumb. Leaving the kids 30 minutes away in a tent. What could go wrong?! The cops get involved, everyone’s looking, but they find Olivia, their shared daughter. It’s Laura, his child from before, that appears to be the target.

Things with Laura were strange early on. Laura spoke of her mom in the present tense for a long time and it’s obvious Michael knows more than he is sharing with her or the police. Why isn’t he telling everything he knows when every second counts? Your past will come back to haunt you every time.

This was good but had a really abrupt ending, leaving me with questions. Also I didn’t love the “she’s crazy if she misses one of her crazy pills” trope. I became okay with the dual narration. It was interesting to hear the different sides because they didn’t always match up and that is reality. The story was interesting though and kept me guessing.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher! I received the audio and the narration was great. Available now!

Yikes! This story has an interesting plot (though it is heavily dragged out) but dramatically nose dives hard at the end (with both an unsatisfactory and open ending) and it harms people with bipolar disease. Shiner must have watched Homeland (the leading character, Carrie, is bipolar) because she copied things Carrie said about herself on the show, which are not necessarily true of people living with bipolar disorder. The woman in the story was capable of everything she did (both good, bad, and 'crazy') without needing to blame it on bipolar disorder. Way to further degradate people living with mental health!

The narration was also TERRIBLE. The male narrators voice for 4y0 Olivia was like nails on a chalkboard and horror story creepy. His voice for the wife, Cara, came across as demeaning/insulting. It's a mockery-like voice for women. The female narrator wasn't much better. Her "child voice" was also irritating however I didn't mind her voice change for the husband, Michael. I really couldn't be paid to hear the male narrator read in the child's voice, it was that bad.

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this audio book.

Quick read with some good twists! Wasn't fully expecting the end which was nice. The narrators did a good job too.

Wow, that ending was shocking to say the least. I definitely did not see it coming. As for the rest of the book, it's pretty fast paced and I really liked the narrator. The characters are decently developed and I really wasn't sure who to trust throughout the book. The twists and turns in this were all very surprising to me and I thought everything came together fairly well at the end. This was my first by Emily Shiner and I really enjoyed her writing style. I am looking forward to what she brings us next.

Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I received the audiobook for this one on July 5th. Thank you #netgally and #dreamscapemedia for this one!
I really liked it, I could tell from the beginning that something was up with the husband, just didn’t know what. Throughout the book I had a suspicion of what the big plot twist was. Little did I know how many little twists were going to be in the last 1.5-2 hours. I absolutely loved Cara as a character, and how she went from laid-back at the beginning to taking charge at the end.
One little thing I would say is, I wish I had not read the whole synopsis before listening to it. I think it says just a little too much, and going in knowing less would of taken this from a 4.5 star to a 5 star for me.

Thank you for the opportunity to listen to this book, I really wanted to enjoy it; however I could not get past the male narrator, he made Cara's voice sound to put it bluntly...dumb. I will read the print version afer awhile to get the narrator's voice out of my head. I will recommend purchase of the book, but have reservations about the audiobook.

5 stars for the story, 2 stars for the narration. This fast paced psychological thriller was mostly told through the thoughts of the two main characters, Michael and Cara. On the surface they appear to be the perfect family living in a quiet neighborhood with their 2 children. Their story begins when Michael takes their 2 children camping and Cara stays home alone for a rest. Michael leaves the 2 children alone in the tent to get a stuffed animal from the car and someone takes one of the girls. As they search for their daughter, the secrets of a previous life begin to unfold. This audiobook is definitely binge worthy.
The narration is really bad. I struggled so much with the male narrator that at several points I wasn’t sure if I could finish the book. If I hadn’t been so sucked in by the plot and wanting to know what was going to happen I would have turned it off. When he changes his voice to speak as the children, it is down right creepy and weird. Even when he speaks as the adults he over dramatizes. It was very hard to listen to.

Thank you Netgalley and Dreamscape Media for this advance listener copy in exchange for my honest review.

Wow. This was a really good story. It started off really slow and I wasn't sure if I would actually finish it, but I'm glad that I did. The ending was worth it. This was a dark and twisty tale where no one is who they seem. I finished it in one sitting. It was short, but it was good.

Cara and Michael have a picture perfect marriage with two daughters. One day, Michael takes the girls camping to let Cara have some much needed time off and one of the girls goes missing.

This story had so many twists that I wasn't sure where it was going. I never would have guessed that ending. Some stories rely too much on twists and it ends up getting jumbled, but this was not one of those books. I'm a huge fan of authors like Kiersten Modglin and Freida McFadden who like to hit you with twist after twist and The Secret Wife by Emily Shiner is perfect for fans of Modglin and McFadden. Four stars. This was great. The audio was okay. I didn't like either narrators voices for the opposite sex or either narrators voices for the kids, but they did an okay job. The story more than made up for the bland voices.

This book was sooo good and kept me wanting to listen constantly! I loved it all, until the end.. I just felt that the ending fell short for me. There was so much build up and intensity, and then just kind of blah. There were also some things that I don't feel got resolved or addressed in the ways I would have hoped. All in all, it is definitely worth the read/listen! I just would have hoped for a better wrap up!

Starts out strong. I was all-in. In the beginning it was the narration. I had to force myself to get acclimated.

The story was there, but I had to dig for it. There is one male and one female voicing all the characters -- they didn't work for me. After I accept the narration, I settle into the story. Things roll well until 50% or so. Without spoiling, there was an event, and I couldn't wrap my head around the actions of the parents. Sincerely, it went downhill from there. The ending was a disappointment. It came out of nowhere.

The second wife portion I thought was clever, and was written well. However, the supporting characters didn't play nicely. (I wanted this to work.)

Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for accepting my request to read and review The Secret Wife.

This book had a lot of potential but fell rather flat. There were a lot of places where the plot required the reader to suspend belief. The characters were not likeable at all to me. At first I liked Cara and felt sorry for her but about halfway through her character did an about face, even before she stopped taking her meds. She became a different person. Michael was a chauvinistic jerk who wanted to control Cara in the guise of taking care of her. He wanted a large family and didn't really care if she did or not. In the end he didn't fight nearly as much as I would have expected. The story was told in alternating viewpoints of Cara and Michael, which worked for me, but both were unreliable narrators. A lot of characters appeared at the end to explain everything. My one big question was "why did no one call the police?" other than Cara and Michael when Laura disappeared. A lot of things that Michael did even prior to the events of the story were criminal and should have been prosecuted. The police did not come across very well when they were called. They were very uncaring considering a child was missing. One final question-what was the magic power Cara said she had and hoped her daughter had inherited? I received a copy of the audiobook from netGalley. I did not care for the narrator. The adult voices were okay, but whichever one of them did the voices of the children did a terrible job.

3/5 stars

Thank you Dreamscape media for the advanced listening copy!

Michael is giving his wife, Cara, a much-needed break by taking his daughters, Laura and Olivia, on a camping trip. However, the trip turns upside down when both girls are taken... and only one is returned safely. Cara and Michael head out on a wild and tumultuous journey to find their daughter, and Cara uncovers more than just her location. With more secrets than anyone could expect, Michael's life is about to be turned upside down.

Overall, this was a fast-paced and interesting read that I enjoyed, with a few complaints. First, there were many repetitive moments. Especially on audio, it's easier to notice when the dialogue is redundant. Second, I'm not a huge fan of the mental health trope, meaning that when one character started talking about being off their medication, that's not my jam. As a mental health counselor, I think that can be either really well done or too dramatized.. and this one felt like the latter. I did like the dual perspectives and narrators, plus I felt like the twist was a fairly good one. All in all, a good read.

Just when I thought I knew where this one was going, it threw me again!

The first part of it seems fairly predictable. Man takes kids camping, leaves kids alone, kids go missing. This is why we don’t leave kids alone in the woods.

From there, it takes a lot of wild curves and turns. First, there is Cara who is a wonderful mother but also admits she has suffered from mental health issues. Then there is Michael who is the one who initially lost the girls and admits he has hidden secrets in the attic at home. There’s also his dead wife, the biological mother of one of the missing girls.

So, who took them? Where could they have gone? In order to find out we have to weave through these secrets to find the answer and, here’s the thing, it will shock you. The ending of this was a little disturbing but also so incredibly satisfying.

☆☆☆☆
This definitely had me guessing. Lies always come out eventually and this is a greay example. This is a great thriller and the ending was not at all what I was expecting.

I had such high hopes for The Secret Wife. I live a good domestic thriller. However, this one just didn't live up to the hype. It started out interesting and with promise, but didn't stay that way. Technically, I'm here to review the audio, so here goes. I'm one of those people that can listen to almost any narrator and enjoy the book. This was honestly the worst narration I've heard in a long while, if ever. I prefer a single narrator or a narrator for each gender. This switched back and forth between a female and male, per chapter. The male was awful for every character other than himself. It was grating. The kids especially sounded like demons.

How well do you know your partner?
Cara and Michael are about to find out.
The story telling at the beginning was very easy to follow along and to get a picture of a loving family of 4...but things quickly escalate and it was a definite page turner for me to discover secrets and to get answers. The book is told in multiple POVs, Cara and Michael. The audiobook is dual narrated by Natalie Duke and Wayne Mitchell. The narrators for the audiobook did a okay job. It was a decent listen but the narrators for me, did not convey the tones and inflections for the opposite sex very well.
Overall, the story is a addicting listen. The secrets, betrayal, and mystery kept me engaged and I couldn't wait to see how it all unfolded at the end. I'd recommend this book to fans of domestic mystery/thrillers.
Audiobook: 3.5 stars
Book: 4 stars