Peter Topside's Reviews > The Wrong Woman

I'm teetering between a 3.5/5 and a 4/5 for this one. First off, I just want to emphasize how much I appreciate and thoroughly enjoy Daniel Hurst's writing. Even if I don't love the content, his skills as an author are top notch. Now this was a very different type of thriller. Simone/Mary is an interesting character. But I wanted a lot more on her background, and how she particularly devised this business that she runs. Did she come from an abusive relationship that drove her to this? This would have made sense that she only worked with other women and never seemed to investigate why the infidelities were happening. Not that I'm excusing such things, but if she was so thorough and skilled, wouldn't she have gone to further lengths to figure each situation out?
Especially when devising ways to hurt the impacted individuals, in order to do the most damage? Was she just so tired of hearing of all the infidelities over the years that it gave her the idea? Or was she coming from a rough childhood that just made her want to make others feel as badly as she did? I think that with such a great character, I just wanted to know so much more about her life leading up the the previous and subsequent portions of this story. Because when it ended, I still couldn't find myself totally on her side or despising her. And some earlier clarity may have helped me find my footing. I also thought that the lengths that Clarissa went to towards the end were a bit unbelievable and lacked further motive. I'm not sure if the author wanted me as the reader to absorb all of this as Simone/Mary getting her comeuppance from a similar, sinister-minded person. To feel the embarrassment and pain that her prior victims did? The story also jumped back and forth quite a bit, and I felt like the situation with Kieran and Michelle also felt like it lacked some much needed depth, too. But, on the positives, this story is written well, has a great pace, some awesome suspense, and manages its plot and characters fairly well. Unfortunately, even at a 260 page length, it needed a lot more foundation and padding to make everything else flow better.