The Other Wife

Suzi is pregnant, isolated in a remote cottage, and increasingly afraid of her controlling husband, Nick. The child she is carrying may not be his, and the lie is eating her alive. When Nora, a former concert pianist, moves into the only other house nearby, Suzi finally has a friend — though Nora seems to know rather more about Suzi's life than she should.

Elsewhere, Elle keeps a spotless house and a careful facade. When her husband betrays her, the crack lets in something long buried from her childhood, and she decides she will hold on to her marriage no matter what it costs.

The Other Wife braids these women together through alternating perspectives, tightening the pressure until a single violent event forces every secret into the open. Claire McGowan writes coercive control, self-deception and female friendship with a cold, steady hand, and the plot turns hardest where the reader feels safest.