[QCrit] SECOND WIVES CLUB - PYSCHOLOGICAL THRILLER - 80K
Hi all! Would love some feedback please. This is a new genre for me (usually write fantasy) & I’ve found the time jump hard to get across in the query, so FYI:
•the book opens with protagonist arrest (present day), rest of the book is her recounting the summer/events (past 4 months) that led up to the arrest. Is this clear?
• Also, is the opening cheesy? (I was trying to wordplay on protagonist writing career)
• Does my ‘book’ section run off or sound relatable to the ‘whydunnit’ question?
• Comp suggestions welcome, I’m so stuck as need to read more in this genre.
• Kind of a First Wives Club (the film) reverse retelling about millennial Second Wives.
• any other feedback welcome 😊 pls be kind, first attempt!
Dear [AGENT NAME],
In a life-imitates-art plot twist, best-selling crime writer and Cotswold socialite Fliss Harcourt is arrested on the eve of her wedding for the murder of her best friend’s husband. She has one night—and one interrogation—to prove her innocence or swap walking down the aisle for one through a cell block. Only, the final hours before she was found floating in the same swimming pool as the victim, the murder weapon still in her hand, are missing from her memory.
Whilst waiting for legal counsel, Fliss attempts to hurry the interview along by recounting the summer that led to her arrest, certain the truth will clear her name. Fresh from a bestselling book tour, Fliss returns to the Cotswolds newly engaged expecting to enjoy her first social season as a bride-to-be, only to become Hellshire's newest 'second wife' when her fiancé's past comes to light, leaving her ostracised by the old-money circles she belongs to. Welcomed instead by an intoxicating group of nouveau-riche second wives, Fliss is seduced by a world of flashy new-found wealth and unapologetic female ambition unlike anything in Fliss's own aristocratic circle.
But as friendships deepen and rivalries surface, Fliss begins to realise that loyalty within this circle is conditional, and that beneath its glamour lie secrets far more dangerous than she first assumed. With morning fast approaching, Fliss must separate memory from manipulation before the story she's been telling becomes the evidence that condemns her.
Complete at 80,000 words, SECOND WIVES CLUB is a psychological thriller blending domestic suspense with social satire and an unreliable narrator at its core. It will appeal to readers of Lucy Foley, Lisa Jewell, and Gillian McAllister's THAT NIGHT.