Review: The Pocket Wife by Susan H. Crawford

The Pocket Wife by Susan H. Crawford
Published by William Morrow on March 17th 2015
Pages: 320
Source: William Morrow via Edelweiss
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An amazing talent makes her debut with this stylish psychological thriller—with the compelling intrigue of The Silent Wife and Turn of Mind and the white-knuckle pacing of Before I Go to Sleep —in which a woman suffering from bipolar disorder cannot remember if she murdered her friend during a breakdown.

Dana Catrell is horrified to learn she was the last person to see her neighbor Celia alive. Suffering from a devastating mania, a result of her bipolar disorder, Dana finds that there are troubling holes in her memory, including what happened on the afternoon of Celia's death. As evidence starts to point in her direction, Dana struggles to clear her name before her own demons win out.

Is murder on her mind - or is it all in her head?

The closer she comes to piecing together shards of her broken memory, the more Dana falls apart. Is there a murderer lurking inside her . . . or is there one out there in the shadows of reality, waiting to strike again? A story of marriage, murder and madness, The Pocket Wife explores the world through the foggy lens of a woman on the edge.

 

When I spotted The Pocket Wife on Edelweiss I knew I had to read it. As I’ve mentioned a ton of times before, I am perpetually on a hunt for thrillers that I keep me guessing, and that synopsis just screamed twists at me!

It became pretty clear to me fairly early on in the story, that the characters weren’t very likable at all, for the most part. Dana wasn’t totally unlikeable, she was just completely unreliable because she was teetering on the edge of reality vs. mania so it was hard to tell what was real or not. The main detective, Jack, is the only other character that I actually liked and enjoyed. He had a rough backstory as well, but he tries to work out his personal problems while trying to solve Celia’s murder because the two start to overlap. I really enjoyed his part in the book and I’m glad he was such a big focus. Dana’s husband was terrible. Gosh, what a piece of work. Celia also wasn’t reflected as a great person either but even those these characters were awful, they made the book. I don’t think I would have enjoyed this as much if Celia was a fantastic person and Dana had a terrific, doting husband! They were definitely perfect characters for this story.

As with most thrillers, they are almost impossible to review because to reveal even the smallest thing, might take away a huge part of the reading experience for someone and The Pocket Wife is no different. I was absolutely surprised at the ending. I was worried the entire way through that the ending would end up being lackluster and rather obvious when the time came, but it was not so at all. Until the ending was upon me, I didn’t have a clue. I thought the story wrapped up nicely as well, it wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely a nice finish.

Overall I would recommend The Pocket Wife if you like mysteries. It wasn’t as ‘thrilling’ as I would have liked and the pacing at points was slow, but the ending made up for any of those flaws along the way because I was thoroughly shocked!