The Third Wife: A psychological thriller from the bestselling author of The Family Upstairs

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Adrian Wolfe is a man who has left two families behind when he has found another woman. The last one, his third wife, is hit by a bus and killed while drunk. This was such unusual behavior for her that it is very hard for Adrian to accept. As he is trying to recover from her death, a young woman seems to be stalking his family, and he is sure that she knows something about his 3rd wife, Maya, and the night she died. As Adrian searches for the young woman and tries to put pieces together, he will find that his large, happy, blended family may not be all that he thinks. There are dark shadows that he has refused to see, and he will have to deal with those before he or his family can move past what happened to Maya.

Here's where the book got complex for me, Adrian has two previous wives and children to both of those wives, all of them, both ex-wives plus Maya, plus all the kids do things together, they holiday together, they spend time with each other, Adrian keeps his ties pretty tight to the past, Maya is not only the third wife, but she's the third wife that can't escape the previous two. I've let this book "sit" in my mind and emotions for 24 hours before writing this review. It's one of those books that makes you think after you have read it so I waited for all the "brain dust" to settle. There is nothing normal about our family, dad. I mean, what were you thinking? How did you think it was going to be OK just to keep building families and then leaving them?””Was Maya's death a terrible accident or was it a suicide? The circumstances of that night, didn't really fit with the person everyone knew. Or thought they knew. The Third Wife is a summer gem. The story is complex…the many characters well drawn... Readers of Donna Tartt and Tana French will recognize Jewell’s pacing for what it is: essential.” — New York Journal of Books The Third Wife is a summer gem. The story is complex… the many characters well drawn.... Readers of Donna Tartt and Tana French will recognize Jewell’s pacing for what it is: essential.” One of the things that I like about Lisa Jewell's books is that each one is different and unpredictable--this is true of The Third Wife.

This was the first book I have read by Lisa Jewell, so I wasn't at all sure of what to expect. I really enjoyed it. I found it to be very interesting from the start, and I liked getting to know the characters. Some of them were very flawed, yet still sympathetic and likable. There were parts of the the book that made me smile, and parts that brought tears to my eyes. I'll definitely be reading more by Jewell. Her first novel, Ralph's Party, was the best- selling debut novel of 1999. Since then she has written another twenty novels, most recently a number of dark psychological thrillers, including The Girls, Then She Was Gone, The Family Upstairs and The Night She Disappeared. I was totally hooked into this family throughout – both of Adrian’s ex wives are wonderful to behold, the children all have their own little quirks and foibles and the emotional resonance of how the adult affairs affect them is insightful and often very sad. A complex tangled web of sentiment is unravelled slowly and surely before our eyes as the truth emerges from the fiction created by Adrian of how well adjusted everyone around him appears to be – the depth of his tunnel vision will at times astound you, and yet it is easy to understand why he suffers convenient blindness to the realities of how his actions have consequences.The story wasn’t really about Maya, or even the other wives and their children it is about Adrian. While there are POVs from the children and Maya it is told primarily from Adrian’s perspective who I found to be a frustrating and unsympathetic character. Lisa is a New York Times and Sunday Times number one bestselling author who has been published worldwide in over twenty-five languages. She lives in north London with her husband, two teenage daughters and the best dog in the world. From all outward appearances, Maya was the perfect fit for Adrian’s unconventional family. Still immersed in his ex-wives lives and juggling the schedules of his five kids, Maya didn’t have much choice but to be accepting and join in the chaos. It honestly was a strange dynamic. One, I couldn’t ever imagine any woman signing up to be a part of. But, sometimes love makes us do crazy things, right? Luke sighed and his cheeks twitched and hollowed as he considered his next point. “No. You don’t. If you cared you’d notice that Cat is stress-eating because she’s so unhappy. You’d notice that Pearl has no life and no friends and everyone thinks she’s weird. You’d notice that Otis is miserable and retreating into himself. You’d notice that I-” He stopped. We get deeper into the mind of Adrian as time goes on, but more so too, how all the family seem to get on together even the ex wives. Unusual, maybe, maybe not.