Wife-In-Law
Oct 5, 2011
Wife-In-Law
Author: Haywood Smith
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Publication Date: September 13, 2011
ISBN: 0-312-60977-9
This is a thick, hearty book filled with 30 years worth of story. Be prepared to sit down, settle in and learn all about Betsy’s life and how she grows from a meek, mouse of a housewife into a woman who knows what she wants and learns to say it out loud.
I will say the book pops back and forth in time a little, which isn’t my favorite way for a book to flow – I get invested in the past character only to find a different, older one in the next chapter. But it’s not a deal breaker as far as reading a book goes, just a mention I thought I’d throw out there.
Betsy is newly married and desperate to prove herself to her husband as she’s from “the wrong side of town”. She was abandoned by her father and left to care for her mentally ill mother at a young age, making her crave someone who will take care of her. She finds this in her overbearing new husband. But when he starts traveling for business she becomes friends with the hippie neighbor across the street – whose views on life are much different than her own.
What happens next in the book is the growing friendship of the two dramatically different couples, the strains that threaten to tear apart friendships and marriages and the ties that keep them together over the next 30 years. The title is drawn from the biggest friendship strain – when Betsy’s best friend and neighbor – Kat – states she’s going to marry Betsy’s ex-husband who was caught cheating on Betsy only a few years before. She doesn’t want him back, but is very concerned how this will affect the women’s friendship and also if Kat herself will be hurt by the man.
The story is told with heartbreak and angst, but has enough wit in the character’s banter and the writing itself that you grow to know them well and want to know how it all turns out.
