Review of The Other Wife by Jackie Thomas-Kennedy. Or: How to Turn a Mild Emotional Breeze into a “Bestseller”

 

Some books hit you like a thunderclap The Other Wife sort of brushes past you with the emotional intensity of a forgotten voicemail.

This novel, if you can call a soft, glacial meander through emotional indecision a novel,is less about storytelling and more about aesthetic melancholy. It’s another entry in the modern canon of “sad-but-safe women pondering their past decisions while gazing wistfully at countertops.” The only plot twist here is that someone in publishing managed to convince The New York Times that this was innovative.

Zuzu, our main character (yes, that’s her name, and no, it doesn’t get better), is a 39-year-old lawyer who might have liked art one time. She’s married to Agnes (emotionally distant lawyer, very edgy), but haunted by her college best friend Cash (ugh, yes, that’s his name), with whom she had just enough chemistry to drag this book into 300 pages of moody flashbacks and no real consequences.

At some point, someone dies. This is the dramatic catalyst that sends her back to her rural hometown, which is conveniently stocked with every “what if” she’s ever suppressed. You’ve read this story before. Literally. It’s the emotional IKEA furniture of literary fiction: vaguely functional, vaguely stylish, and painfully familiar. You know every screw before you open the box.

But here’s the kicker: it made the New York Times bestseller list. Not because the writing will change your life (it won’t), not because it explores groundbreaking themes (it doesn’t), and certainly not because it contains a plot twist worth texting your friend about (unless your friend is legally obligated to care about your lukewarm feelings).

This is what happens when a good literary agent meets a bored marketing team. It’s a checklist novel. Biracial identity? Check. Queer marriage? Check. Longing for lost artistic dreams? Check. Soft exploration of aging, motherhood, and regret? Check. Nowhere in that list is “originality” or “actual insight,” but that doesn’t matter, because someone whispered “Kiley Reid meets Celeste Ng” in a boardroom and boom: instant validation.

It’s not that The Other Wife is bad. It’s that it’s designed to be unoffensively readable, emotionally vague, and just edgy enough to seem serious to people who read two novels a year. It will resonate most with readers who think sadness is depth and that complex relationships mean a lot of sighing in hallways.

If I were 16, this might have felt electric, like peeking into the lives of complicated adults doing very adult things (like going back to their hometown to have feelings). But I’m not 16. I’ve seen this movie, read this book, and watched this character make slightly different choices under a hundred different titles. There’s no risk, no narrative ambition, and honestly? No reason for this to exist beyond filling a quarterly quota for “quiet, literary women’s fiction.”

Verdict:

A very pretty shrug in hardcover. Its greatest plot twist is that someone thinks this kind of emotional oatmeal is still surprising in 2025.

⭐️⭐️ (one star for clean prose, one for the PR campaign that got it here)

The Other Wife: Because apparently, publishing is still in its “melancholy woman stares at her past” era.