Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon


Dec 10, 2012

While reading Wife 22 I engaged in simultaneous duty-shirking and exaggerated eye-rolling. I certainly had better things to do, yet I couldn’t put the silly thing down. The perfect formula for a rainy Saturday afternoon read, in my opinion.

Wife 22, otherwise known as Alice Buckle, is engaged in an on-line survey about marriage. In answering the questions, Alice realizes that she is bored and probably unhappy in her marriage to William. She eventually engages in communication with Researcher 101 outside of the survey via fake Facebook pages. After developing this on-line relationship and engaging in reckless behavior (in terms of marriage, at least) Alice discovers what she knew all along and lives happily ever after.  Kinda makes you wanna vomit… I know.

Except that it doesn’t. Make you wanna vomit, I mean. Using a combination of social media and the survey Alice is filling out, Gideon has constructed a perfect way for Alice to reminisce, reveal and react in a very genuine way. Even if the premise and the twist are unlikely, it only takes a teensy bit of willingness to suspend belief to appreciate Alice’s dilemma, see a bit of yourself or your friends and family in her, and root for the happy ending.

Reviewed by Helen H.
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