*this review contains spoilers for The Last Mrs. Parrish*
The Next Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine is the sequel to The Last Mrs. Parrish, a thriller about a con woman and an abusive marriage. I wasn’t at all certain where a sequel in this story could go, but I was excited to find out. And holy shit, did it go places.
Daphne escaped her monstrous ex-husband and started a new life in California. And it’s great, for a while. But soon her children start asking questions, begging to see their father, she feels she has no choice but to go back for the summer.
Meanwhile, Amber is out of money, and getting desperate to maintain her new fancy lifestyle. With Jackson out of prison, and Daphne returning, she needs to get creative to escape him and become a wealthy, independent woman in her own right. And someone from her past re-emerges, determined to thwart her at every turn and make her pay for her crimes.
The addition of Daisy-Ann and her perspective was an excellent choice here. I was intrigued by this new character, seemingly out of place, and wondered how she fit into the narrative. It all comes together with shocking new secrets revealed.
I’d forgotten how viscerally I hate some of the characters in this series. In this book especially, I hate Jackson with a passion. It makes The Next Mrs. Parrish hard to stomach at times, especially with the thought that this all could have been avoided if Daphne made one single different choice at the beginning of the book.
Daphne’s decision to come back to Bishops Harbor is both baffling and frustrating. Why wouldn’t she tell her children the truth instead of putting the whole family back in danger? It’s a conundrum that is my most significant issue with this book, although, without this character’s stupid choice, there wouldn’t be much of a book. And I suppose it’s authentic. People do make wild choices when dealing with the aftermath of abuse.
This book is an intensely suspenseful thriller that had me shaking at parts with just sheer rage on behalf of the protagonists. The Next Mrs. Parrish gave me actual skin-crawling anxiety, but it was worth it. I won’t go into too much detail to avoid spoilers, but just bear with this one. It’s an incredibly twisty, intricate story and the ending is well worth spending the day with bated breath, waiting to find out what happens next.
Writing: 4.5
Note: some of the links included here are Amazon Affiliate links, which means if you purchase through said links, The Nora Theory gets a cut.
Leave a Reply