Becky's Great Book Reviews The Wife Stalker by Liz Constantine

Sometimes I want a book that's just pure entertainment and I don't have to think too hard. The Wife Stalker by the author team that calls themselves Liv Constantin fits the bill. It's a twisty page-turner that was pure fun to read.

Alternating chapters between two women give us the points of view of Piper and Joanna. Piper is relatively new to Westport, Connecticut. She came there from California to start over, opening a meditation/health center. She's changed her name and has a past: her first two husbands and a stepchild are dead. Piper was present when the accidents happened; one husband fell while hiking and the other and his daughter drowned while sailing. When Piper meets handsome, wealthy lawyer Leo Drakos she decides that she won't let the gold ring on his left finger, nor the fact that he has two small children, stand in her way.

Joanna is not having it. Leo and those kids belong to her. She can feel that Leo is cooling towards her and expressing interest in beautiful, younger Piper. When Joanna needs to move in with her needy mother to take care of her after a fall, Leo takes the opportunity to shut her out of his and the children's lives. Through sessions with her therapist, Joanna expresses fear and panic that Piper is stealing her life and may be capable of hurting her children. Joanna decides that she will do anything to protect her family from what she knows is a master manipulator and a sociopath.

As readers, we get carried along with Joanna's frustration and incredulity at Leo and Piper's cruelty as they shut her out so completely, even referring to her as being dead to the children. It's almost gratifying that Leo's youngest boy acts quite bratty towards Piper, and that both children miss their mom so much. Joanna becomes determined to get Leo and her children back, tracking down people that knew Piper in her past and collaborating what Joanna knows in her heart about the woman that took over her life. A page-turner that's quick and easy to read, The Wife Stalker is a good one to throw in the mix for a lively diversion. I give this novel four stars out of five.