The Starter Wife

May 6, 2019
Claire Westcott, the principal narrator of this gripping tale of obsession from Laurin (Girl Last Seen), believes passionately that fate brought her together with her husband of two years, charismatic Byron Westcott, a professor at Ohio’s Mansfield College, and fate is never wrong. Byron’s first wife, Colleen, also a Mansfield professor, committed suicide five years before Claire married Byron. Claire, 20 years younger than her spouse, is consumed with being the perfect second wife and ensuring that Byron forgets Colleen. Plagued with unexplained illness, fainting spells, and days of lost consciousness, Claire is prepared to do anything to keep the marriage that is her destiny intact. When she discovers emails between Byron and an unknown correspondent indicating he “has to get rid of her,” she begins to wonder if Byron is a serial wife-killer. A second narrative voice, which belongs to a woman who may be stalking Claire, raises the tension. The bombshell plot twist toward the end will surprise most readers. Laurin knows how to ratchet up the suspense. Agent: Rachel Eckstrom Courage, Folio Literary Management.

May 1, 2019
Two years into her marriage to literature professor Byron Westcott, a man 20 years her senior, Claire Westcott feels things going awry. As their passion ebbs, she ponders the death of Byron's starter wife, artist Colleen May, whose paintings still hang in Claire's home, a presumed suicide whose body was never found. But now Colleen seems to be sending Claire messages. And someone (an enamored student of Byron's?) is stalking Claire and has plans for a future with him that doesn't include her. Indications also are that Byron, in league with an unknown woman, is gaslighting Claire to make her question her sanity. As first-person-narrator Claire is questioning whether her life is in peril with Byron, her estranged older sister reappears in her life, and the plot takes a turn, revealing just whose safety and sanity are in question. Laurin, with her knack for psychological suspense, here portrays the effects of obsession in chilling detail as the facts of Claire's life are revealed. A spine-tingler.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)