Alafair Burke is a popular author. I've been seeing her books for years and reading many favorable reviews of them. After reading her book THE WIFE, this is MY impression: not bad and not great.

The wife is Angela. She's another gorgeous woman who marries a rich man. I say "another" because that is nothing new; it is the beginning of such a typical scenario in so many popular novels I was already ho-humming.

The rich husband is Jason, and he is accused of a crime. Of course, the wife stands by the husband even after she learns more about what he has been up to.

But Angela has a secret of her own. She's told part of her secret to a few people, but only her mother knows all the truth. How far will she go to protect the whole secret?

I'm always suspicious of authors' reviews and blurbs of other authors' books. They seem to be written by friends trying to do other friends a favor by saying something like "this year's GONE GIRL," which is what Harlan Coben said about THE WIFE. In fact, it isn't as unputdownable as GONE GIRL is at first, and THE WIFE didn't make me want to throw the book against the wall as I did after I read the end of GONE GIRL.