The Subsequent Wife by Priscilla Masters

​       Since these female powered thrillers have become all the rage, there have been every possible twist and variation on this title…The Other Wife, The Next Wife, The Last Wife, etc. etc…hence (presumably) this weirdly precise clunker…who says Subsequent when it comes to spousal descriptions, anyway?
      Well, actually the male lead in this book possibly might, the oddly precise fellow that he is. But then again, desperation is a terrible adviser and Jennifer (Jenny) Lomax is desperate. She’s had a rough go of it thus far, living on the streets at its nadir, after being chucked out by her uncaring parents upon their splitting up. She never made it to college…because money. She rents a tiny space from a young family, who only use her to make the mortgage, making that living situation all kinds of weird and unhomey…because money. The two friends she had are too busy with their own lives. Jenny is constantly lonely and worried about her financial security and future.
     But she did finally land a decent job after years of slogging away for minimum wage doing sh*t work, literally. Now Jenny helps operate a busy storage facility, makes ok wages and gets to meet lots of people. And as fate would have it, one of them turns out to be a quiet, reserved 40 year old widower, who initially becomes the objection of jenny’s obsession and later a somewhat reluctant affection. Is he the romantic lead of her dreams? No, not at all. But he embodies a promise of safety and security that Jenny finds positively irresistible enough to overlook all sorts of red flags. Of which there are many. No race car would have proceeded around the track with flags that red being waved that aggressively but Jenny preservers with that desperate, stubborn naivete of youth. Reader, she marries the creep. And, subsequently, (just had to throw that in) gets into a lot of doodoo for her choices.
     So that’s the novel. It isn’t hugely original, in fact for the overwhelming majority of it, it reads like a modern retelling of Rebecca…the differences only come in toward the end and to author’s credit they are significant enough to make this into its own (albeit heavily Rebecca inspired) story.  The narrative speeds along at a nice clip, although at times its repetitive, especially in reinstating Jenny’s financial and emotional woes. And Jenny, for all her youth, is a likeable enough of a character to make watching her steady careening overboard compelling enough of a read. Just about. Nothing special here, but perfectly decent with a few entertaining plot twists and a doozy of an ending, which is a small accomplishment in and of itself.  Fans of the wrong man she married type of stories should be pleased. Thanks Netgalley.