I was kindly sent a beautiful advanced copy of The Husbands by Flatiron Books (Macmillan) and it’s definitely been one proof that I’ve been waiting to pick up the next time I was in the mood for a thriller. I didn’t really know what I was going into before starting it which is always nice, but as soon as I heard it being compared to The Stepford Wives, I was in!

Nora Spangler is a successful attorney but when it comes to domestic life, she packs the lunches, schedules the doctor appointments, knows where the extra paper towel rolls are, and designs and orders the holiday cards. Her husband works hard, too... but why does it seem like she is always working so much harder?

When the Spanglers go house hunting in Dynasty Ranch, an exclusive suburban neighbourhood, Nora meets a group of high-powered women--a tech CEO, a neurosurgeon, an award-winning therapist, a bestselling author--with enviably supportive husbands. When she agrees to help with a resident's wrongful death case, she is pulled into the lives of the women there. She finds the air is different in Dynasty Ranch. The women aren't hanging on by a thread.

But as the case unravels, Nora uncovers a plot that may explain the secret to having-it-all. One that's worth killing for. Calling to mind a Stepford Wives gender-swap, The Husbands imagines a world where the burden of the "second shift" is equally shared--and what it may take to get there.

For a thriller, it definitely took me longer than usual to read as it did take a while to get going. I found there to be lots of added running commentary alongside the actual story, but I guess that was to help the reader understand the protagonist, Nora, and the pressure she was under both at home and work.

As the story progresses, the uneasy feeling in my stomach was getting stronger and stronger and I started to suspect that something wasn't quite right but I just didn't know what. I also began to feel more and more sorry for Nora, as well as starting to really understand the difference between what mums and what dads do. Nora thought she was in an equal parent partnership, yet the more time she spent with the high-flying women who lived at Dynasty Ranch, she soon began to realise just how much mothers can typically end up doing more for the children and the house. The fact that Nora’s husband justified his behaviour by saying he had work commitments when Nora had the same (if not more) pressure from work, was really eye-opening to me and in fact, scared the hell out of me!

Yet, I really liked Nora and I did at one point really feel sorry for her husband too. In fact, the characters were so brilliantly executed, I could really imagine each different character and the area in which they lived in too.

Although the characters and the plotline were fantastic, I was a bit confused by the ending and I don't think it had the full desired effect that the author had hoped for but I still really enjoyed it and it was a different sort of thriller to what I'm used to! It was in fact a ‘feminist thriller’ which I learned about for the first time after reading which is basically a thriller that challenges the status quo and delves into the exploration of the inner lives of women, within a backdrop of psychological crime. So definitely a genre I want to explore more of…

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