General Fiction | Book Chatter

The Mad Wife
By Megan Church
Sourcebooks Landmark, Sept 2025, 352pp.

The Short of It:

Holy smokes.

The Rest of It:

My favorite thing is to read in bed, late into the night. This one night, I poorly planned my reading, scrolled up and turned the last page. What? So, I did what any reader would do. I began to frantically scroll through Hoopla and Libby to find my next read. Fast.

The Mad Wife is what I settled on. I loved the retro cover and I have a thing for domesticity and minutiae. I dove right in.

Wow. The wife in this story isn’t mad like angry, although there is plenty to be angry about. No, Lulu Mayfield has been deemed MAD by well-meaning neighbors, her own husband, and the doctors who see her. Diagnosed with Hysteria.

In the 50’s, that seemed to be a thing. Raising baby after baby with little to no sleep and still responsible for putting dinner on the table every single night, keeping the house presentable, and maintaining an attractive appearance (hair, makeup, and the like). It was the norm, and apparently women who couldn’t do it were prescribed meds to help, or even worse.

Lulu Mayfield is a likable but flawed character. She has a darling son, and a newborn baby but motherhood is never easy for her. Not like it is for the other moms in her suburban neighborhood. They seem to do it without any effort at all. Every morning she gazes at the empty home across the street, daydreaming that it’s hers and she can enjoy just a little bit of peace.

That home is not empty for long. Bitsy and Gary move in with their daughter Kathleen and things are not quite right. Bitsy is friendly, but distant. Lulu watches them when they don’t know it, and Bitsy is off in a way that’s hard for Lulu to understand. What is going on over there?

Lulu has some good friends in her circle, but no one truly understands the isolation that she feels or just how bad she’s gotten. As she struggles to do daily tasks, she fails miserably. She begins to question the point of living. Even with her children, she finds herself to be a poor example of parenting and an even worse example of a doting wife as her husband struggles with insecurities at work.

This is a marvelous read. I couldn’t help but root for Lulu. She’s so fragile and yet no one sees how despondent she is. Doctors!! Oh my gosh, male doctors are still doing this today. Dismissing serious symptoms and calling it anxiety. Lose some weight, get some exercise. Sure. When you can’t even lift your head off the pillow, how the heck are you supposed to do that?

Church’s writing stirs up empathy and rage!! I often found myself absolutely outraged at what Lulu was subjected to. Reading the book definitely reminded me of those early morning hours spent with a screaming infant and how easy it was to feel so alone in the world.

There is a twist that I will not mention. You need to discover it for yourself.

Well done. Highly recommend.

Source: Borrowed
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

The Homemade God
By Rachel Joyce
The Dial Press, July 2025, 336pp.

The Short of It:

Complex families always hold my attention.

The Rest of It:

There is a heatwave across Europe, and four siblings have gathered at their family’s lake house to seek answers about their father, a famous artist, who recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his long-awaited masterpiece.

Now he is dead. And there is no sign of his final painting. ~ the publisher

Rachel Joyce. I’ve enjoyed every book she’s ever written and this one was no exception. The story unfurled. I like that word. It started off kind of funny and silly and then got real serious.

These siblings believe that their father has lost his mind. Marrying a woman much younger, losing weight, being even more eccentric that usual, which is saying a lot. And what about his last big painting? His work of art that he keeps bellowing about? Where is it? What’s happened to it?

The new love interest calls all the shots. No wedding. Siblings not included. They just head to the family lake house in Italy and the siblings decide it’s time to meet this new woman. I mean, she is their stepmother after all.

This is where the story gets interesting because this woman who has taken over their father’s life, doesn’t seem to be all that bad. As the siblings get to know her, all in different ways, they begin to question her motives and frankly his. But then he’s found dead.

At the house, the siblings all have their own theories as to what happened. There’s no way their father drowned in a lake that he literally grew up on. He was a fine swimmer. What gives?

This story is built on sibling interaction. They agree, they disagree, they argue over motive and all the logistical stuff like the house, the remains, the investigation. But Netta, the eldest, is convinced that her father was murdered. So much so that they all just throw up their hands and become even more divided.

This is not a predictable story. I want to say that upfront. Many times I thought I knew where the story was going and then was pleasantly re-directed. I really enjoyed this story and this family. If you like Joyce’s writing, you will enjoy this new one as well.

Recommend.

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org affiliate links.

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