Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon

Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon – 400 pages
Advance Reading Copy courtesy Random House

Book Blurb:

Maybe it was those extra five pounds I’d gained. Maybe it was because I was about to turn the same age my mother was when I lost her. Maybe it was because after almost twenty years of marriage my husband and I seemed to be running out of things to say to each other. But when the anonymous online study called “Marriage in the 21st Century” showed up in my inbox, I had no idea how profoundly it would change my life. It wasn’t long before I was assigned both a pseudonym (Wife 22) and a caseworker (Researcher 101). And, just like that, I found myself answering questions.
Before the study, my life was an endless blur of school lunches and doctor’s appointments, family dinners, budgets, and trying to discern the fastest-moving line at the grocery store. I was Alice Buckle: spouse of William and mother to Zoe and Peter, drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions. But these days, I’m also Wife 22. And somehow, my anonymous correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpectedly personal turn.

Review: 4 stars

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Wife 22 was a delightful, light read ultimately about the keeping and maintaining of a healthy monogamous relationship with your spouse. Told in the unique styles of Facebook posts and emails, as well as traditional dialogue, this book is an honest look at marriage in the 21st century. Funny and raw, the author hits on many typical hot button topics that can wear on a marriage in your midlife years.

Quotes I liked:

And no, I am not capable of experiencing the present with the same sort of attention to detail. But once the present becomes the past I seem to have no problem attending to it obsessively.”

-“For the first half of your life each minute feels like a year, but for the second half, each year feels like a minute.”

– “What was unspoken between us, what need never be explained or said, was that nobody would ever love us again like our mothers did. Yes, we would be loved, by our fathers, our friends, our siblings, our aunts and uncles and grandparents and spouses–and our children if we chose to have them–but never would we experience that kind of unconditional, nothing-you-can-do-will-turn-me-away-from-you kind of mother love.”