“It will get done. But the part that he leaves out is that he’ll have nothing to do with the doing.”
Nora is a wife, mother, and lawyer who is fed up of her well-meaning but completely oblivious husband, Hayden, not helping her out more with childcare and housework. Nora’s lifechanges when the couple’s house hunting leads them to Dynasty Ranch; an exclusive suburban neighbourhood, seemingly ran by powerful women with obedient husbands. Evoking a Stepford Wives gender-swap, Nora goes on a mission to uncover what’s really going on in Dynasty Ranch when she takes a personal injury case there.
Chandler Baker’s The Husbands has a really enticing premise. It’s filled with many accurate and laugh-out-loud descriptions of Nora resenting her husband’s lack of agency, as the book tackles feminism, motherhood, family dynamics, gender roles, and more. Baker’s writing is fun and straight forward, but also really detailed as she explores an interesting bunch of characters, but specifically Nora and Hayden’s family dynamic. The authentic yet comedic tone capturing what women really think of men is a major strength. The comedy dissipates about halfway through when the book’s genre leaned more into a thriller.
For all of its positives, the book is massively let down by its pacing. It’s a slow burn that takes far too long (the very end) to get to the heart of the mystery. There’s too much detail where it’s not needed, too much time spent with characters that aren’t important to the plot, and frequent reference to an “accident,” the nature of which should’ve been revealed much sooner than it was.
The mystery was revealed right at the end in the underwhelming fashion of the bad guy just explaining their master plan in a big speech. Nora, as a lawyer, suspected some things were a bit odd now and again, but never even came close to uncovering any big truths. Nora had a lot on her plate as a character, which is part of the point, but I feel it would’ve been much more exciting had she actually inched closer and closer to the truth each time, rather than the book always jumping to pointless details about Nora’s family and work life.
A faster pace and tightening up of the story would’ve done this novel wonders, but it’s still an interesting read for its brilliant feminist commentary.
Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. The Husbands by Chandler Baker is out August 3rd, 2021.
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