Enjoyed the writing and the setting, but ultimately found the ending a little rushed and pretty predictable.

I read this as part of the Read with Jenna pick and loved it. The story and main characters were real and I would highly recommend!

Nora is Wil’s young, second wife. She is trying, without success, to gain acceptance to the Winter Park Florida country club set. The night she gives a successful birthday party for her lawyer husband, he disappears. She is the prime suspect. With help from a few friends, she tries to solve the mystery of his disappearance. I enjoyed this. Both the story and the characters were engaging. It was a bit predictable but overall it’s a good beach bag read. Four stars for me. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Nora is new to the elite Winter Park Society and has been brought into it by her husband, Will. When Will disappears, Nora finds herself searching for the truth and fighting against the society she finds herself thrust into. This was a quick page turning mystery and I found it fun to read! Great pick, Jenna!

I wasnt sure about this book but i am glad a took a chance. It is sooo good and i devoured this in 2 days.

This book is such a mysterious page-turner! I loved the fact that it was mysterious without involving gore or violence. This book is going to be highly discussed this Summer. In this whodunnit, a young woman is trying to figure out what happened to her husband. Will disappeared the same night of his 46th birthday party, with no hints or clues as to what occurred. Our main character Nora, is slowly learning what happened to Will, while also recalling the past timeline of how they met and fell in love. Nora is his second marriage and a much younger woman, so there is some tension from the ex-wife. Also, Nora has never really felt like she fits in well with the wealthy crowd of Winter Park, Florida. I really enjoyed the book, and I would love to see more from this author!

Get an insider’s peek into a little-known high society in Florida with Happy Wife! The book starts when Nora’s husband goes missing, and then it alternates timelines from before and after the disappearance. Nora is the second wife to a successful injury law attorney in the posh enclave of Winter Park, a suburb just outside of Orlando. Drama ensues as all the tangled web of social status and interactions are unwoven in an effort to get to the truth of what happened.

I went into this thinking it would be a mystery thriller, but it was really more just a mystery, I wouldn’t call it twisty and my jaw definitely never dropped. It reminded me a lot of The Last Thing He Told Me, where the wife is left piecing together details she didn’t know about her workaholic husband’s life in an effort to understand what happened, just not nearly as exciting. And there were some plot conveniences that I struggled pretty hard with. But the setting was fabulous - I recently visited the Winter Park area and it was fun reading about places I’d been - and it kept my interest wanting to know what happened.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Bantam Publishing for sending this DRC for review consideration.

I’m the outlier for this one. Didn’t like any of it. Thought it was boring and predictable. Most loved it though so maybe it’s me!

A fun and twisty book filled with suspense and perfect for summer!
It had short chapters, a current timeline and a past timeline, lots of rich, secretive characters. The atmosphere and the plot had me invested. Perfect beach read!

I loved this thriller centered around the wealthy enclave of Winter Park Florida. I lived in.Florida for many years so the setting was intriguing to me. When Will, a nice handsome husband goes missing, all eyes turn to his wife. Will is older and an established wealthy artery and his second wife is younger and comes from less wealthy roots. Enjoyable, well-written and I was sad to see it end.

I think this is a great pool or lake read—would be good for an airplane as well—frothy and mysterious with a while by bunch of rich people behaving badly.

I felt like it took too long to start piecing together what happened. I would have been more hooked if the alternate timeline started earlier. It was an enjoyable read, taking a “vacation” to Winter Park and living among the elite.

This was a good read. It was funny at parts, sad at others, and definitely kept me guessing at who the culprit was until the very end. Overall I enjoyed it!

This was a quick summer thrill read. Short chapters made the reading easy. I did not expect the ending it was quite a surprise. I just wished that the author would have had an epilogue with what Nora did for the future. Thank you NetGalley for the copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I loved this book. It was the perfect summertime thriller - quick and easy, but had you guessing who did it. I was totally surprised by the twist. Definitely a fun read.

Happy Wife is a wonderful whodunit. It takes place in the town of Winter Park, Florida. Nora Somerset is the main character. She is the second wife of Will Somerset, a sucessful lawyer. Este, Nora's best friend and her husband, Beau live next door. Mia Somerset is Will's 14 year old daughter. Constance is his ex-wife who hates Nora. Fritz (Frederick Hall III) is his business partner. Gianna is Fritz's wife who is best friends with Constance so also dislikes Nora. Autumn Kensington is an event planner who has been hired to put together Will's 46th birthday party. All the whowho's of Winter Park are invited. Will hopes this will introduce and open the door for Nora to be accepted. Nora's friend, Marcus who owns a restaurant is catering the party, After the party and they are in bed Will gets a call from Mia that she has left her Taylor Swift hoodie sweatshirt on his boat and she had to have it that night. Will goes to his boat but never returns. Later his body is found in the water off Dog Island.

Fritz comes to Nora's house several days after Will is missing as he has missed an important meeting. He tells Nora that she should report Will missing and calls his friend, Detective Travis Ardell to come to Nora's house. Several times Nora sees a grey car drive by her house. Nora decides to go to Will's office to see if she can find any evidence of what Will was doing. While there she finds a phone number that she follows up on and starts looking for that person, Dean Morrison and tries to find him.

A news conference tells of Will's disappearance with a photo that Nora has never seen. Also mention is the car accident of Dean Morrison who is dead. He is the person who smashed into Carol Parker's iron fence that belonged to her grandfather. Mia stops by and tells Nora that she never called her father and had the hoodie sweatshirt. Who called?

Nora is called to the police station to identify a blue shirt that belonged to Will. it was covered with blood. It was the shirt he wore to his party. Ardell is starting to believe that Nora killed her husband. Fritz comes to the police station and tells her to go home and not to talk to anyone. Later Will's body is found there also. Nora is going home and sees that she is being followed by the grey car. She stops suddenly and approaches the car. She finds out that the man following her is Perry Conroy who is a friend of Dean's. He is following up on Dean's death for his wife, Anne. He tells her that Will had hired Dean to look into something for him. He told Nora that they all knew Will. They had grown up in the town of Arcadia. They were friends with his father. He believed that Dean was murdered because of what he was doing for Will. He told her that he would ask his friends at home if they knew anything.

Nora goes to Constance's house and confronts her. Fritz later calls her and tells her to leave Constance alone. Nora realizes that Fritz is on Constance's side. Perry calls her and tells her that the phone call that Mia was suppose to make came from the Hall's phone. Nora realizes that Fritz was involved. She also finds out from Ardell that they had found the weapon, a hammer under her dock. Nora realizes that she is being set up and decides to find out who killed Will.

This is where the story takes off with all the twists and turns that it is hard to put all on paper. I will leave it to the reader to enjoy to the exciting and unexpected ending.

The acknowledment is just as interesting as the story itself.

Thank you NetGalley and Bantam Books for this ARC.

Easy 5 stars!

Nora and Will enjoy a whirlwind romance in spite of their 20 year age gap and enormous financial gap. Nora is a struggling 27 year old, trying to make ends meet. Will is a 46 year old successful attorney living in a wealthy community in Florida. After marrying quickly, Nora has trouble fitting in with the high brow residents of Winter Park. But when Will goes missing, the police consider her a prime suspect. And the Winter Park snobs create a feeding frenzy over the drama. Nora will have to become a detective to figure out what happened to Will before she is put behind bars.

I loved this from the first page to the last, it was captivating and fun to read. This is the perfect summer beach read!

Thank you Netgalley, Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine, and the author for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

This work was surprisingly good! I have a weakness for modern mystery/thrillers, even though many of them are underwhelming. I was sure I knew who did what several times, knew what the twist was going to be at the end, and was prepared to suspend disbelief left and right. BUT, the book ended and I never once had to roll my eyes or just go with it for the sake of the plot. This was unexpected and refreshing.

The characters were decently written. The protagonist was relatable, I enjoyed getting to hear her side of the story, and there was never once that I wanted to slap her. However, all the secondary characters were dangerously close to being caricatures, lacking the kind of depth that could have added much to the story. The story is told in the past and present timeline, with the past focusing on Nora’s early days in her relationship with Will.

Even with all those positives, this work wasn’t necessarily anything groundbreaking. It’s one of those that’s certainly enjoyable but isn’t that memorable. I think the author tried to include some commentary on social class and wealth, but it was pretty shallow, nothing that insightful, and honestly got repetitive because it was just the same comments every time.

This was certainly more of a mystery than a thriller, which I think is part of why it worked so well. My thanks to Random House Publishing for allowing me to read this work. All thoughts and opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Loved this book! Very entertaining - a murder mystery full of suburbia drama, backstabbing, and twists and turns. Highly recommend!

This mystery read was so good I can not wait till others are able to get their hands on the I hope it sakes out lol because I loved it omg !!! I love how the story came full force it was so good