Sophie O’Neill, along with her husband and four-year-old son, has just moved back to her hometown of Mapleton, located in the Piney Woods of Texas. Sophie was previously a lifestyle editor for a magazine and lived near Chicago. She is tired of the fast-paced city life and wants her son to grow up in a small town with a better environment and a slower lifestyle. She chooses Mapleton because she spent her last two years in high school there and has a very good friend, Erin, who still lives there. Moving gives her time to work on her blog and Instagram feed, @sloweddownlife.
However, after spending several months in Mapleton, Sophie is beginning to get bored with being a stay-at-home mom, gardening, and blogging. She meets and begins to hang out with a group of women calling themselves “The Hunting Wives”, and hunting doesn’t necessarily mean just guns. Erin warns Sophie that Margot, a socialite and the group’s leader, is dangerous, but her words fall on deaf ears. Margot, Callie, Tina, Jill, and Sophie usually meet on Friday nights to shoot skeet, socialize, drink, and bar hop. When the women go to bars, they have two rules. Use first names only and don’t go all the way. Sophie is, at first, shocked that Margot, especially, likes to indulge in cheating and bawdy sex. Margot further complicates matters by hitting on men in their twenties and younger. Sophie learns that Margot is having a secret fling with the town’s quarterback, who also happens to be Jill’s son.
Things go from bad to worse when a popular teenage girl is found dead on Margot’s property, and Sophie becomes a prime suspect. Could one of her new friends be the actual killer? In order to clear her name, Sophie must research, dig for any clues she can find, and then risk her own life.
This novel from May Cobb is filled with surprising twists and turns and has a shocking ending. The members of The Hunting Wives act like mean girls on steroids. All of the women are running around on their husbands, gossiping, and drink A LOT. There is a lot of drinking, even when they aren’t with each other. Jealousy, anger, marriages on the rocks, vengeance, sensuality, and drinking seem feed their relationships with each other. All of them have a love-hate relationship with Margot. Sophie is so obsessed and enamored with Margot that she even stalks her. The amount of time Sophie spends with the women causes her to neglect her wonderful, understanding husband and young son. It is ironic that Sophie is the one who wanted to move to a small town. After her husband quits his job and they relocate, Sophie then goes crazy out of boredom.
Kudos to May Cobb for keeping readers on their toes! Just when I thought I had figured out who the killer might be, the author would throw in another curve, and I would have to start thinking again.
The Hunting Wives has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly will make its debut on May 18, 2020. Although it is billed as domestic fiction, I would call it a murder mystery, instead. Hand this book to readers who enjoy mysteries and books set in the south. I recommend it for public libraries and give it 4 out of 5 fleur de lis!
Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Books for allowing me to read and review this title.
No comments:
Post a Comment