Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Thriller

While I don’t remember why I put a hold on Liv Constantine’s The Last Mrs. Parrish, I’m glad it became available. I’m not sure if it is my Nancy Drew roots, but I still really enjoy a good, suspenseful novel. While not truly a mystery, the novel does raise a number of questions that require paying attention and some sleuthing to answer before its end. Told in the perspectives of both the Mrs. Parrishes of the novel, Constantine crafts a suspenseful and exciting thriller. Amber is tired of being poor and overlooked. She has dedicated a fair amount of her young adulthood to becoming the bride of a wealthy man. When she discovers Daphne Patterson, sees her privileged life, she sets her cap for her husband - the mysterious and compelling Jackson Patterson. The first half of the novel is told from her point of view - the second from Daphne’s.

The two halves cover much of the same time. Constantine masterfully builds and intertwines the two perspectives. She plants the seeds of suspicion and concern in part one. Amber seems the queen of manipulation. These seeds grow in a suspenseful way throughout. We get to know Daphne much better when she takes over the narration. I enjoyed seeing some of my suspicions confirmed, but was still startled with all that I learned. The tension continues to build, even as the reader has some sense of what is about to happen based on part one. I was listening and found the book very different to turn off, looking for reasons to keep it playing in my ear, invested in the outcome. Suzanne Elise Freemen and Meghan Wolfe do an excellent job of bringing these complexly developed characters to life. The setting - mostly one of wealth, luxury, and privilege - is a perfect accent to the plot here. (Not quite the resort bribe that I talk about loving here.) The difference between the wealthy and not wealthy contributes much to the events as they develop. Jackson thinks his wealth makes him untouchable; Amber wants the ease and things that she believes come with wealth. Daphne is painfully realistic about the price of wealth.

Spoiler alert* I don’t like to give things away, but I could not stop thinking about Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” as I was reading this. The issues raised in this 1892 short story about the lack of autonomy for women seem illustrated in a contemporary way here. While many readers will be picking up Constantine’s subtle hints - the full picture of Jackson is not fully illustrated until part two. How much do I hate considering how, still today, a woman can be essentially a prisoner of the man she marries - especially when wealth and innocent children are involved. Constantine successfully illustrates not just once, but twice, how such “relationships” are developed. While in the end, I can’t admire either Amber at all - and admire Daphne only a bit for taking charge of her life, I admire Liv Constantine for her skill in bringing them both to life in The Last Mrs. Parrish. She successfully creates remarkable suspense and entertainment, and provokes serious thought.