Review: the sunday Wife by Cassandra King
I’m not sure that I would have picked up The Sunday Wife by Cassandra King had it not been for the fact that a book club I’m involved with is reading it. It’s women’s fiction, the only experience of which I have involves the works of Robyn Carr. But I don’t regret having read the book, and I’m eager to discuss it with my book club.
Dean Lynch is a preacher’s wife. Her husband is an ambitious pastor in the Methodist church, and Dean has always chafed under the restrictions his duties place upon her. When she and Ben move to Crystal Springs, Florida, though, her life changes when she meets and is befriended by Augusta Holderfield. From a distance, these two women have nothing in common. Augusta was raised with wealth and privilege. Dean, in the meantime, was raised by backwoods drunk rednecks. Augusta is wild and vivacious, while Dean is thoughtful and careful. But the two develop a bond. But when a tragedy strikes, Dean will have to reevaluate all her priorities and beliefs in order to figure out her place in life.
The thing that pleasantly surprised me about this book was how flawed the characters were. Dean is by no means a poor put upon woman whose life sucks due to her martyrdom. She does martyr herself a lot, but she’s also kind of judgmental and passive aggressive. In this way, she and her husband, Ben, are perfect for each other, because Ben is also great at being passive aggressive as well as a complete douchebag. At the beginning of the book, I was afraid that I couldn’t stomach 500 pages of Dean and Ben being horrible people to each other. But Dean grew on me. I found mmyself empathizing with the struggles she went through, and as the book went on, I kept encouraging her to leave the life she was leading, which clearly didn’t suit her, and get a new start.
This isn’t going to be an easy book for some readers of this blog to get through, and that’s another of the book’s surprises. We have adultery, some of which Dean disapproves of, some of which she justifies. The paragons of loving relationships that are most obvious are a gay couple. And King doesn’t seem to be saying verry positive things about organized religion, especially things involving church politics. If those things bother you, then you ought to skip this book. But for the most part, all those things worked for me. The gay couple is adorable, the adultery gave the book a dash of realism that I appreciated even if I didn’t always approve, and I can well imagine there being some truth to what Dean thinks about church politics.
If I have any quibbles with this book, it’s that I thought Dean took a long time to finally manage a new start for herself. She didn’t take the steps necessary to get to a happier place on her own initiative. She was reacting to the circumstances around her, and she basically had to wait until she had no other choice. I also hated the final treatment of Ben. Dean’s last encounter with her husband is ludicrous and anticlimactic. I wanted a bit more oomph there, and I’m still a bit angry that I never got it.
Overall though, I really did enjoy this book, and I would read more Cassandra King if given the opportunity. I’d recommend it to fans of women’s fiction who like a bit of darkness in their books, and who are open-minded to flawed characters. This one gets a B+ from me.
Note: I read this book via Bookshare. Also, I could not find other reviews. If you’ve read this book, let me know what you think of it in the comments!