Wife 22

by Melanie Gideon

If you like Modern Family, you'll love this

Maybe it was because I was about to turn the same age my mother was when I lost her. Maybe it was because my husband and I were running out of things to say to each other.

But when the online study called "Marriage in the 21st Century" showed up in my inbox, I had no idea it would change my life. It wasn't long before I was assigned both a pseudonym (Wife 22) and a caseworker (Researcher 101).

And, just like that, I found myself answering questions.

Before the study, I was Alice Buckle: wife and mother, drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions.

But these days, I'm also Wife 22. And somehow, my correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpectedly personal turn. Soon, I'll have to make a decision-one that will affect my family, my marriage, my whole life. But at the moment, I'm too busy answering questions.

As it turns out, confession can be a very powerful aphrodisiac.

• ISBN10: 0345527976
• ISBN13: 9780345527974
• Publish Date: 29 May 2012 (first published 1 January 2012)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Ballantine Books
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 298
• Language: English

Reviews

[ibeforem]

Not bad, but the ending wasn't particularly difficult to guess.

[elvinagb]

Alice Buckle is questioning her 20 year marriage to the love of her life, William. She thinks her 12 year old son is gay and that her 15 year old daughter has an eating disorder. Her part time job as a school drama teacher is creating drama among the stage-mother parents and she has reached the age (45) that her mother was when she died. While searching "drooping eyelids" on Google she comes across a company doing a marriage and love survey and signs up as "Wife 22" with "Researcher 101" asking her a series of questions.
Through the series of survey questions, Facebook updates, emails, and flashbacks to her single days, we watch as Alice questions whether her marriage can be saved while trying to deal with all that is happening in her life and not confront or talk directly to her husband and children. For anyone married with children reaching an age of greater independence and facing and empty nest this is an easy story to relate to.
Gideon's humor is engaging and this would make a great summer beach read.

[Leah]

When I requested Wife 22 on NetGalley, I wasn’t 100% sold on the novel. As an almost 22-year-old, novels about wives aren’t necessarily high up on my radar. I like my single girls! I don’t want to hear a wife who is unhappy or miserable, y’know? So I started the novel with trepidation I will admit. However, the premise intrigued me! A marriage study? With questions and answers? Sign me up! And do you know what folks? I am so, so glad I read the novel. So glad I didn’t let the fact it’s about a family and a wife and a forty-something prejudice me as I might have. Because it is a brilliant novel.

The premise is just so, so on the money. There will be tons and tons of wives out there who will just click with this book. There will be young, singletons like me out there who just find the novel so intriguing even though it has nothing to do with us (yet). It’s so clever, so funny, so witty, so warm and so wise. It was just so readable and I absolutely adored the relationship between Alice (Wife 22) and Researcher 101. It’s almost as if Alice Buckle had two lives. Her real life, where she was bored in her marriage, worried about her kids – Zoe with a potential eating disorder and Peter (aka Pedro) coming out of the closet! – and then the online Alice, who could reminisce about her past life, about how she met William, things she’d like to say to her kids, to William.

Wife 22 was just amazing. I really enjoyed it, surprisingly so I will admit. It’s a book that will surprise you. A book that delights and makes you smile. A book that makes you think. I definitely recommend it. Wife 22 surprised me and it will surprise you. Sometimes a book isn’t something you think it will be and Wife 22 is that. I loved it. Gideon has really hit the mark with this novel and I will be interested in seeing what comes next from her because she is definitely a massively talented and massively clever author. Wife 22 is a timely novel and Gideon executed it perfectly.