Review: The Housewife by Valerie Keogh

Synopsis:

This perfect house on a quiet street was supposed to be my sanctuary, a place to recover. But everything changed the moment I saw that woman in the charity shop. She triggered something dark, buried deep within my memory…

Now I’ve started forgetting small things, like locking the front door.

And bigger things, like remembering to pick my little girl up from nursery.

I feel terrified every time I pass through a particular spot in our living room.

And sometimes, when I’m alone, I’m sure I can hear a baby crying…

I think the woman knows what happened to me. But if I can’t trust myself to believe she’s real, who else will believe me?

One of the most gripping and heart-pounding psychological thrillers you’ll ever read! You won’t be able to put this jaw-dropping thriller down until it’s finished.

Shop The Book: The Housewife
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I have been deep in a domestic suspense thriller spiral and showing absolutely no signs of slowing down. The Housewife by Valerie Keogh had a synopsis that stopped me cold and I knew immediately it was going to feed the addiction perfectly. Thank you to Boldwood Books for this one.

The Story

The Housewife follows a woman who has moved into a perfect house on a quiet street to recover from something she cannot fully remember. When she sees a woman in a charity shop something dark and buried stirs inside her. And then the forgetting starts. Small things at first. Then bigger things. There is a spot in the living room that fills her with terror she cannot explain. And sometimes, when she is alone, she is sure she can hear a baby crying.

The central question this book asks is a devastatingly good one. If you cannot trust your own mind, how do you know what is real? And if you cannot know what is real, how does anyone else believe you?

Reading Experience

I love an unreliable narrator and this one is rightfully, gloriously unhinged. We can tell from early on that what she is experiencing is not quite rooted in reality but the book is careful never to show us where the misinformation is coming from. Is she being lied to and manipulated by the people around her? Or did she do something awful that her mind is protecting her from by distorting everything she thinks she knows? That question hangs over every single page and Keogh keeps it alive all the way to the end. The suspense never lets up and I was turning pages far later than I should have been.

Writing Style

Keogh drops clues with real intention throughout this book, enough to keep you suspicious and guessing but never enough to let you feel certain of what’s actually going on. Our suspicions are held just out of reach until the very end when everything finally clicks into place.

Characters

I was never sure how to feel about anyone in this book and I mean that as a compliment. It was never clear who was trustworthy and who was not, which meant I became attached to these characters with a constant hesitation of suspicion that never fully lifted. That kind of reading experience, caring about people you cannot quite trust, is exactly what a psychological thriller should deliver and The Housewife nails it.

Themes and Tone

The questions at the heart of this book are ones that stayed with me long after I finished it. How do you trust your gut when you are not sure if your gut is sane? How do you trust the people around you when your memories are not intact? How do you advocate for yourself when your own mind feels like the least reliable witness you have?

There is something deeply unsettling about a story where the person we are following cannot be certain of her own reality, and Keogh leans into that discomfort completely.

Final Thoughts

The Housewife is a fantastic psychological thriller with great twists, a genuinely unhinged unreliable narrator, and a central mystery that holds all the way to a very satisfying ending. If you love domestic suspense where you cannot trust anyone including the protagonist herself, this one belongs on your list. Valerie Keogh is clearly very good at this and I will absolutely be picking up more of her work.

Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this virtual book tour Boldwood Books.

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About the author

Valerie Keogh is the best-selling author of The Nurse and The Wives. She has sold over a million copies of her books and has been translated into several languages. She lives in Wiltshire with her husband and a huge black cat, Fatty Arbuckle. She grew up reading Agatha Christie and initially wrote crime novels – she now writes psychological thrillers.

The Little Lies was shortlisted for the Crime Fiction Lovers Award 2021

Valerie has a BA in English and an MA in American Literature.

She is currently published with Boldwood Books.