Fiona Barton

"Following the twists and turns of an unimaginable crime, The Widow is an electrifying debut thriller that will take you into the dark spaces that exist between a husband and a wife. When the police started asking questions, Jean Taylor turned into a different woman. One who enabled her and her husband to carry on when more bad things began to happen. . . But that woman's husband died last week. And Jean doesn't have to be her anymore. There's a lot Jean hasn't said over the years about the crime her husband was suspected of committing. She was too busy being the perfect wife, standing by her man while living with the accusing glares and the anonymous harassment. Now there's no reason to stay quiet. There are people who want to hear her story. They want to know what it was like living with that man. She can tell them that there were secrets. There always are in a marriage. The truth--that's all anyone wants. But the one lesson Jean has learned in the last few years is that she can make people believe anything. . ."--

The widow

Ryan Mateyk

It's not going to win any literary awards, but The Widow is a thrilling story and an impressive debut.

Patricia Nelson

It was obvious from the beginning what has happened and how but it was interesting to see it come out from all the different perspectives.

Jade Waistnidge

Shreya Punj

This book--so much promise, so little delivered. 

I'm a sucker for a good thriller and pride myself on solving or "cracking" the author's formula almost always midway through the plot. 

Well, when I couldn't figure out what Barton was playing at till I was almost 80% done, I thought there was some major surprise coming in the last 4 chapters. There was none.

I finished the book, put down my Kindle, took my dog for a walk, and saw the book's plot in his freshly deposited poop.
 
The book's language isn't half bad, the characters all seem to have great potential, but when you stretch them over 25 chapters (or more), you're left with a monotone sketch of people who seem to only be existing for one single thing in life. The protagonist, the "widow", is a dullard. The detective is a dullard. And even the husband seemed like a wasted plot line, in life and in death.

I'd say give this one a wide berth and read something better.

I think this book was full of twists and turns. The way the chapters are organized can be a little confusing and the ending was a bit predictable. Over all I really liked the mystery! 

Katelin Hippe

Maggie Hepditch

This was not a thriller at all, everything is explained very quickly and there's no mystery to it. Goodreads also did a terrible job of summarizing this book as it portrays Jean as a master manipulator when she's just another victim of her husband. She doesn't try to manipulate anyone when it comes to telling her side of the story. Overall a sad story but not that thrilling and with an okay ending.

Shirley Jones 

Sarah Vaughan

If you want to live happily without considering what each and every person you ever meet ever is capable of, don't read this book. If you don't mind spending the rest of your life in a cave lamenting over the sad and sorry state of humanity, then go ahead and pick it up.

The Widow

Lauren Attaway

I've been struggling through a series of good books but not necessarily fall asleep reading books. I started The Widow over the weekend and it was like -BOOM- this is why I read. This is what I've been missing, a book where I have to know how it ends, a book that I read every spare minute. It's nice to be excited about my reading again. 

I can understand the comparisons to Gone Girl and the Girl on the Train, because while you may not love the protagonist you'll certainly care what happens next. 

I related to the titular character in a sense that I often feel like I've spent a lot of my time biting my tongue with my romantic partners. As a quiet but not shy person, my default setting can be to just bare through and hope others can figure out how I want them to behave. 

"...the only people for me are the mad ones" I will definitely be recommending this book to my book club as it's another crazy one.

mary

my first book of 2020 finally finished! 

admittedly, i probably wouldn’t have picked this up had it not been the free editor’s pick on audible. i had just renewed my subscription for the new year and saw it was free so decided to give it a listen, and it wasn’t a bad choice. 

my main issue with this novel is that it seemed to really drag. about halfway through i thought it was ending, but it continued to tell the same story in a labyrinth of long chapters and dislikable characters. ultimately, the only thing keeping me reading this book was my own stubborn nature not to ‘dnf’ my first book of the new decade. had it not been the first of a new decade, i probably would’ve given up around the halfway mark. 

all in all, this book was fine. nothing remarkable, but not terrible.

Rachel

The Widow is Jean Taylor. Her husband just died and the police, reporters, everyone wants to know if Jean will finally talk her might of husband done. He has been accused of kidnapping a child, but he assures his wife that it's all a misunderstanding and the police are setting him up. She finds out some disturbing things about her husband along the way and begins questioning her judgement about the man she knew. The story goes back and forth between the investigation and the interview Jean does after the husband's death and it is told from Jean's perspective, reporter, police, and the mother of the missing girl. The book started off really good and kept me reading, but around 200 page mark it started to feel like it was dragging. It became clear what happened with slow revealing of information of the details for the rest of the book. The characters are very one dimensional, the only way Jean could be described was timid and that's it. I liked the plot and I do recommend reading this book if you like mystery thrillers, I just feel it could of been written better.

The widow

Reviews