A twisted Cinderella story from New York Timesand USA TODAYbestselling author Ann Aguirre Marlena Altizer Durst lives in her husband’s shadow. He controls her every move–what she wears, the food she eats, and the friends she’s allowed to make. If she disobeys, there are…consequences. And he has all the power. To outsiders, it seems that she leads a fairy-tale life. But nobody ever wonders if … ever wonders if Cinderella was happy after she married the prince. Marlena has traded freedom and safety for luxurious imprisonment, and most days, that seems like a bad bargain. Death may be the only exit she’s allowed. Just like his first wife. And his second. Unless she flips the script.
Praise:
“The Third Mrs. Durstis a slow, dark burn that leads to a fantastic explosion of an ending.”–Victoria Helen Stone, bestselling author of Jane Doe
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Stories often surprise me, but The Third Mrs. Durst really surprised me. I love an excellent twist here and there. This is a dark menacing thriller about a young backwoods girl who escapes that life of extreme poverty. Instead, she becomes a model and attracts the attention of an older man, Mr. Durst. She wants the life that will come from being this rich man’s wife. At least, that’s what she thinks at first. He’s not the same behind closed doors. He’s every married woman’s nightmare, the controlling abusive husband/stellar public citizen and man about town. How will she untie herself from this man? Well, I’m certainly not going to tell you that. This is an excellent read that will steal hours of your life before you realize it. So tense and taught and chilling! Read it! Thanks to NetGalley for an arc in exchange for an honest review.
Wow, wow, wow!
The Third Mrs. Durst starts off with a young, runaway girl named Marlena. We follow her determined climb into success. Her traumatic push from girlhood to womanhood. And, her manipulative path into becoming the perfect wife. The perfect Mrs. Durst.
Micheal believes he has found the ideal candidate for his new wife. Innocent, alone, malleable Marlena. He controls all aspects of her life. He has a role for her to play and any misstep is something she pays dearly for. As the relationship progresses one thing becomes clear. Marlena’s life has an end date and it’s quickly approaching.
This is an intriguing game of cat and mouse in which you are never quite sure who is the predator and who is the prey.
I’ve read Aguirre before but it was a YA series of hers and The Third Mrs. Durst is such an exceptional departure from that – I honestly didn’t expect this level of…well, extremely messed up. Sure didn’t stop me from loving it. I’ll say the beginning was a small struggle as it was difficult to build an emotional connection with Marlena. She’s quite stark and bland until you hit about the 25% mark. From that point on the pace picks up and it’s hard to set this one down. But don’t expect to come out of this with warm fuzzy feelings, it’s simply not that kind of tale.
The Third Mrs. Durst had me glued to the pages from beginning to end. I read it in one sitting and thoroughly enjoyed it. I recommend it to those who like thrillers with devious characters.
Copy provided by publisher through Net Galley
“Some people just need killing.”
This book is a chilling cat and mouse game between two soulless individuals bent on mutual destruction via marriage.
Marlena Altizer rises from humble, difficult beginnings, becomes a model and catches the eye of very wealthy and very controlling Michael Durst. Their relationship begins like a modern day Cinderella story but as soon as Michael becomes her husband the rules seem to change.
Each have secrets, private agendas and trust issues and thus begins the aforementioned cat and mouse game. Who will outwit the other? What are the rules? Is this a game to the death?
This is a fast, tight read that riveted me from page one and never let up until the end.
Thank you to Ann Aguirre, Midnight Ink and Netgalley for giving me this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This is one of those books where the hints were there, but the pieces didn’t fall into place until the end. I have read several books where the protagonist is the third wife, but this story was quite original. With the psychopath husband very much maintaining control, it seemed an unlikely possibility for the protagonist to gain an upper hand, so the outcome kept me guessing.
This book is delicious! I grabbed this book on a whim because I loved the cover and the synopsis. There were no reviews and zero buzz about it. But something about it made me throw caution to the wind and give it a go. I am so glad I did!
While this book isn’t anything ground breaking and has zero twists, it is so devious and entertaining that I finished this book in a day. It’s fast paced and thrilling ; a little bit of Behind Closed Doors meets Maestra.
Thank you to Midnight Ink for my copy of this book via NetGalley
Although this was a very quick book, I have to say that this one was not very character heavy at all. It was all plot and that plot was pretty slow. This one lacked the twists and turns I have come to love in my mystery thrillers and I have to say that if this book would have been longer I most likely would have DNFed it.
This is a tough book to review because everything has the potential to be a spoiler so I’ll stick with the basics. Marlena does everything to attract rich widower Michael, but once they are married, everything changes. When I say that, it’s not pretty at all.
Marlena must decide what she’s going to do, and letting Michael make himself a widower (again) isn’t an option. More is revealed about these characters as the story continues, and yeah — Michael is a bad dude. It wasn’t always easy to be sympathetic to Marlena as well, and I thought that took something away from the story.
This is a quick, easy-to-read thriller that you can finish quickly, if you are in the mood for some romantic suspense. Trigger warnings for violence. Regular readers of mystery/suspense might find some of the events predictable.
Three and a half
This is by an author I used to associate primarily with sci fi so I was interested in what she would bring to this more suspense driven genre.
Mrs Durst is not at all what the world perceive her to be. She plays the innocent, manipulated pawn and in reality she’s pulling all the strings. I did have huge amounts of sympathy for her as her Svengali type husband is absolutely vile ! This isn’t a happy ever after romance she has bought into but an abusive relationship that just escalated with surprising alacrity. Yet as much as I knew her husband deserved all that was coming to him at times it was still difficult to imagine exactly how he would get ‘his’ as the author increasingly shocked this reader with time lapses . If I’m brutal I didn’t particularly even like the protagonist Marlena very much but the violence and actions in play in this book were truly offensive and definitely not acceptable so obviously I did want her to prevail. There was a point when the author fooled me and I actually thought Marlena was human and cared about someone yet I was only to realise that she was every bit as manipulative as her narcissistic, psychopath of a husband . Truly Marlena is an amoral , vengeful heroine and I’d like to say I hadn’t worked out the twist at the end but sadly the author laid out breadcrumbs that were very easy to follow. I am a little disappointed that I wasn’t surprised but frankly I’m more disappointed that I never really came to actually like Marlena. I think this book will divide opinions but I am glad that I read it even though my rating might not seem to support that.
This voluntary take is of a copy I requested from Netgalley and my thoughts and comments are honest and I believe fair
4.5 Stars
Marlena came from a very poor family, with a drug addicted mother, an absent father and several younger half brothers and sisters. Her older sister left several years ago and has never looked back.
At 16, she gathered up her meager belongings and leaves for the big city. She lucks into modeling and becomes quite well known and wealthy. She now leads a fairy tale life.
She meets and marries a very rich man who will give her everything she deserves. But if comes with a price. He controls her every move. He monitors what she eats, when she eats, he dresses her, he sends her to school to learn foreign languages. He even invents her family background to make her ‘perfect’.
He has chosen a personal bodyguard for her. He is to report if she does anything outside of what he authorized. She wants to go to a particular store by herself, she must ask her bodyguard if it is okay with her husband. If she disobeys any of his rules, there are consequences. He has all the power.
Then she discovers that his first two wives died .. one was a car accident, the other committed suicide. She just knows that he killed them or had them killed. She supposes they just weren’t perfect enough.
The only way out of this mess is that one of them is going to have to die. Who will it be?
There are lots of twists and turns that you won’t see coming. It’s a real page-turner.
Many thanks to the author / Midnight Ink Books / Netgalley for the advanced digital copy of this psychological suspense. Opinions expressed here are unbiased and entirely my own.