Print Length: 240 pages
Publisher: Embla Books (October 23, 2024)
From Goodreads.com: Deep in the woods, you can hide more than secrets...
Every day, in a remote cabin hidden deep in the woods in the Scottish Highlands, Mary wakes up before dawn to make breakfast from scratch. She tends the garden and feeds the animals. Every night, Mary makes sure she has dinner on the table for when her husband Cal gets home from work.
She puts on his favorite lipstick and greets him with a smile. 'I've missed you.' It's not true and he knows it. But he likes to hear it all the same.
Mary is the perfect wife and like any good wife she knows her job is to keep her husband happy.
But lately as she notices her first wrinkles appear, she can sense Cal change. A scowl at dinner not being ready on time, a too tight grip as he leads her to the bedroom tells her he's noticed too. And old memories are coming back too, of her life before the cabin...
Then she finds a stack of letters hidden under the floorboards detailing a life eerily similar to her own. They're addressed to her: 'To the next woman.'
If she's not the first to play the role of Cal's perfect wife, what happened to the woman in the cabin before her? And how long does she have until she is next?
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My Rating: 2 stars out of 5
Right off the bat, I'm pretty sure this is a "me" problem. The book is well written with a steady pace that makes it easy to get lost in, but the characters are a mess and there are so many little ways this book could have been so much better than it was in my opinion. I am also going to give my review without giving away too many spoilers.
This book is dived up into three parts.
In the first part we meet Mary and her husband Cal and get a taste for their life together. And while it quickly becomes clear that Cal is the "bad guy", he is just done so over the top that it becomes a parody. I mean who tells their pregnant wife that not only can they not go to the doctor to make sure their pregnancy is going well and get prenatal care, but then goes on to tell the same wife that they will only allow a doctor to attend the birth if she is "a good girl." And this isn't even going into all of the other ways he abuses her mentally and physically.
Part two really shows us who Cal is, not only in the treatment of his wife, but in his introduction of his "second wife" to the relationship. Of course these are the chapters that shine some light on just who Cal is and what he is capable of. So it only makes sense when his heavily pregnant wife risks leaving him (on foot nonetheless). And I was not surprised in the least when it becomes too much and she gives birth alone, outside.
And then we get to part three.
On the surface, I think part three was meant to be so surprising that we just went along with it. And maybe I would have, if again, the first two parts hadn't shown Cal for exactly who and what he was. Had there been more moments of him not being an overbearing jerk I might have believed it. But as it was, it was easy for me to guess that not all was as it seemed. Which honestly was a darn shame because I can see how it could have worked perfectly as the truth if just a few details had been tweaked.
But it was what it was and honestly the ending? Seemed a little too tidily wrapped up for me. Yes those who needed to face the music did. But those who were left just seemed to ride off into the sunset, and for some reason that left me feeling very unsatisfied.
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