Wicked Wives

by Anna-Lou Weatherley

[Leah]

Anna Lou Weatherley burst onto the scene last year with her debut adult novel Chelsea Wives. I haven’t actually read it, though as with most books I haven’t yet read, it is on my shelf to be read. When I heard of her new novel, I was interested. I’m not a massive fan of the cover, it just seems rather blah compared to say a Tasmina Perry cover which are always glamorous and beautiful and I expected a bit more for Wicked Wives’ cover, but I dived in eagerly, especially as Anna Lou’s novels are similar to Tamsina Perry’s and I love me some Tasmina Perry. I was massively impressed with Wicked Wives, and it very much is a novel Tasmina Perry fans will enjoy, as I did.

Wicked Wives focuses on the lives of quite a few players, so many characters in fact that I felt it needed a glossary of characters! Mostly it follows two families, the Scott’s and the Mayfield’s, along with a man named Tom Black, who is linked to everyone, and Loretta Fiorentino. They’re all connected in many different ways, and it all begins with a night in Vegas, and ends on a boat. It all boils down to what happened to Tom Black and how in the world he ended up missing in action. I thought the plot was excellent and although I wanted to get really annoyed with certain characters at certain times, I found it so intriguing that I just had to keep reading.

Because there are a lot of characters in the novel, it can be a bit difficult to keep up, but once you sort out the family trees and who knows whom and how they’re all connected, it all becomes a lot clearer and it’s a lot easier to keep up. Much like a Tasmina Perry novel, there’s a lot of glamour, a lot of intrigue, a lot of fashion (there’s something about this type of novel that means fashion must also be involved, perhaps because everyone is so rich? Who knows. Fashion doesn’t bother me…), and a lot of incest, for lack of a better word. Everyone is involved with everyone, in more ways than one and it’s a very tight-knit community. My favourite character was probably Tess Scott, Ellie’s daughter, she has quite the plot line and I was rooting for her to come through all her typical-rich-girl issues. Loretta Fiorentino drove me nuts, as she did everyone else in the novel.

I thoroughly enjoyed Wicked Wives. It was really well written, I so enjoyed diving into the novel and there was many a time I stayed up way too late reading in a bid to learn more and more. Anna Lou Weatherley seems to manage so easily to keep all the balls up in the air and I always wonder how authors like Anna and like Tasmina Perry manage to juggle so many plots and characters. There wasn’t much wrong with Wicked Wives. Sure, I wished Ellie wasn’t as much as a drip where Tom Black was concerned; yes, he had his moments and I could see why she was so into him, but then he went and did something so horrific it just changed it all for me. In the end, I felt he was a pretty reprehensible character. He wasn’t accountable for any of his actions, and I felt he should have been. I definitely recommend Wicked Wives though it was a brilliant read, and it’s perfect for these hot summer days.