First Wife’s Shadow

Adele Parks

OBSESSION can be deadly! If spine-tingling, brain-twisting domestic thrillers float your boat then set sail with bestselling author Adele Parks (pictured below) in what is probably one of her best yet psychological dramas.

First Wife’s Shadow – a tale so full of plot twists that reading it is a dizzying experience – has jealousy, suspicion and obsession written right the way through its wickedly dark and fast-beating heart.

Meet 47-year-old Emma Westly... she’s the CEO of Britain’s biggest wind harvesting company and her greatest talent is ‘discipline.’ She’s also wealthy, independent, rational, and has long put behind her a chaotic childhood and, after a string of ‘shoddy encounters,’ all thoughts of dating and marriage.

But then sensible Emma meets freelance photographer and handsome widower Matthew Charlton at a conference. He’s over ten years younger than Emma, kind, gentle, interested in her work, admires her successful career and, against all odds, seems to be just what she needs.

Her close friends, Heidi and Gina, are initially delighted but as Emma’s relationship with Matthew moves fast and they get engaged after just three months, they start to panic, fearing that Emma might be exploited because she’s a rich woman after all.

Emma doesn’t care that Matthew has no money because she’s in love and that’s all that matters. Matthew says the death of his first wife means he wants to seize the day but the memory of the ‘perfect’ Becky hangs over them and Emma does have one tiny doubt.

If Matthew’s wife hadn’t died, he wouldn’t be with her. And Emma wonders if she is, in fact, his second best and will she ever fill the dead woman’s shoes?

Haunted by the shadow of a woman she never met, Emma becomes obsessed with her, and jealousy and suspicion start to fester between the couple. But then events take a darker, dangerous turn. Suddenly Emma doesn’t know who she can trust... her friends, her husband, or even herself?

Expecting the unexpected is the dominant theme in this rollicking, rollercoaster ride into secrets, suspense, deadly desires, and a sense of menace that hangs like a pall over Emma’s every move and thought. To say the story is gripping is an understatement, with tension mounting at every trembling turn of the page.

Add on Parks’ trademark gift for keeping you guessing, and her eye for the small, intriguing character details that add such an exquisite human touch to her gripping thrillers, and you have a heart-pounding, contemporary version of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca that will leave you bewitched, bewildered... and longing for more!
(HQ, hardback, £16.99)