The Glass Wives by Amy Sue Nathan
My rating: 
(3 / 5)
This book has been on my to-read list on the library website for a while now, and I can’t remember why it originally made it onto that list, but I’ve been trying to work through that (as it has more than 100 on it, and my list here has more than 500 on it, and they only overlap a little – oy vey).
At any rate, I’m not sure what I think about this book. I was, by turns, entertained and annoyed by it. There were often times I had trouble with my suspension of disbelief because the characters were doing things that were just so weird. I can put up with a good degree of that in books, but sometimes, here, it was just over the top.
The Glass wives is the tale of two Mrs. Glass’. The ex, mother of ten year old twins, who was divorced from her philandering husband a few years ago, and the current, mother of his baby and former mistress. We meet them at Mr. Glass’ funeral, which is full of all the complexity and angsty-in-law-divorce-ness. The two – widow and ex – now have one another left for family. Throw in a pair of friends/neighbors and somewhat removed by geography family members and you have a full crew of bizarre behaviour.
This book was okay. I found myself scratching my head more often than not and questioning reality through half of it. I found parts of it sad and parts of it life-affirming and most of it just kind of weird. I just… it’s been a while since I read this and I still can’t really wrap my head around some of the plot points here. People move in together who just shouldn’t. Friends get mad at each other over stuff that is ridiculous. People forgive people for things they shouldn’t, honestly, and don’t for things they should. There’s lots of drama and it seems in places like it’s trying to drum up some Wisteria Lane type nonsense, but just doesn’t do it well enough to slide past me.
I have a hard time writing reviews for books that are this middle-of-the-road for me. It was okay. Just okay. Nothing special either good or bad.
2 Comments for “Book Review – The Glass Wives”
Samantha Adkins
says:Well, at least you wrote a review. Very nice of you:)
Katie Kenig
says:Ha! I’ll bet the author would have preferred a good review, but it was just so meh *shrug* for me. But I was determined to review every book I read so I reviewed anyway, haha. There’s only one book last year that I didn’t review once I made that promise to myself, and that was because it was just so nothing-to-say about and so short that after staring at a blank computer screen for half an hour I gave up!