The Replacement Wife: A Novel

The real villian in every book like this one is actually not either of the crazy murderers, but the husband/family/friends who are so unbelievably obtuse and so full of callous disregard and lack of respect for their wife/friend/whatever that they end up doing as much damage as the villains as they accidentally work along with them to gaslight the protagonist. Nothing I hate more than books in this genre than when the protagonist forgives the husband. Harris is a piece of shit. Honestly any ending where she doesn't completely abandon every single man in this book is disappointing. I hate that she even gave Harris the option of staying together. He spent the whole book disregarding, gaslighting, lashing out, and blaming her for everything. I get not wanting to admit your brother is a killer, but truly acting like your wife is crazy for being concerned about 3 dead wives/fiances? It's probably just me, but I'm a bit tired of this trope, but I'm tired of characters piling on (even accidentally) with gaslighting and then being narratively excused/forgiven. It gives me such anxiety reading a woman backed so into a corner with NO support and then forgiving everyone but the knife-wielding maniac. Honestly it would be such a better narrative to just go ahead and have the husband be in on it, at least that would interesting. Also why would Elisa have been so protective of Josh in that facedown after spending a whole book investigating multiple murders of women in his life?

Honestly I guess that this review is more a rant than anything, and maybe I'm sorry to pile on this specific book, but I've just been seeing a lot of this trope and I hate every time.

It would have been nice to have either a sequel or more closure