Thank you to Simon & Schuster for the physical review copy! These are my honest, unhinged and unaltered thoughts. 

This book will not be for everyone, but it might as well have been written for me. Or for anyone who enjoys watching the dumpster fire that is reality TV. I truly cannot put into words how much I LOVE rich people behaving badly…. And rich people getting what they deserve. 

I also love reading about unlikable people. These characters were about as shallow as a kiddie pool that’s sat out in 90° weather all week. 

I would recommend reading this through the lens that all reality tv and books about reality tv will be a bit campy. One thing that kept this from being a 5 star read was a character googling something I felt was unreasonable for their character and their supposed motives for doing so. But ya know what the Bachelorette producers let Jenn Tran get up on stage and watch her proposal next to the man who broke her heart and has an abusive past. Soooo maybe tv producers just don’t have a soul or empathy? 

Shout out to Birdie for being the baddest, pot stirring, lying, martini slinging lady to ever grace the pages of a book. Re-gifting gifts with the original gifter and gifted there? Diabolical. 

Add a Gossip Girl-esque online troll? Sign me UP. 

AND it’s queer? Ugh, Astrid you might as well have tied this up with a bow just for me. 

There were also a LOT of deaths in a short span of time. To a point where it almost got a bit comical. If it was reality tv, let me tell you I would BINGE the whole season in a day. I did binge almost the whole book in one day, it was quite demented in the best ways. 

The transcripts interspersed through the book were a great touch! 

I would recommend to those who enjoy campy mysteries with mixed media elements and a variety of unlikable characters. 

Was it great? No. Was it fun? Yes. Two things I love as a Jersey girl married into a Sicilian family - the housewives and a thriller and this had both. I guessed most of the plot by page 35, but there were some twists I didn’t see. 

The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey explores the world of reality TV and gives readers a sneak peak into the backend of the fictional world of the reality show of the Goddesses of the Garden State. To me this book was a nice break from my typical reads and brings something to the market that I haven’t seen before. My biggest qualm with the book is the pacing - I feel like the author should have spread out the main plot points over the entire book instead of having them all pretty much occur within a few chapters. It just felt like a lot happening all at once. That being said, I do understand the beginning of the book needed to “world build” for the show. Overall this was a quick, easy read! I think it is a good read for reality TV lovers or anyone who wants the drama of reality TV, but in a book.

 

A murder-mystery inspired by “Real Housewives” reality TV. Thank you to Saga Press Books for the gifted copy. This review is not sponsored or incentivized. 

An entertaining premise that felt just like watching reality housewife TV. It was vain and bloodthirsty, with deeply unlikeable characters, soapy twists, and a sharp-witted narrative voice. 

The plot pacing did not land for me. There was a great deal of set-up, with the murder not occurring until the story's second half. The plot twists and reveals came in quick succession thereafter, leaving little room or time for a satisfying investigation. The romantic subplots, too, were jarring. There was little on-page development, and they often ended as suddenly as they began, leaving them feeling shallow and unsatisfying.

Regarding characterizations, some issues with POV ‘head-hopping’ and backstory info-dumping, especially at the beginning, disrupted some of the flow. The characters were also very caricatured, leaning into stereotypes and exaggeration. That might be a narrative choice poking fun at the genre, but coupled with the pacing resulted in me caring very little for the characters or what happened to them.

I do think it is a very fresh idea, and Dahl’s prose is lovely. I was entertained but left looking for substance – that’s similar to my feelings on TV series like Housewives, though, so another could argue that the execution was spot-on. 

Please review the content warnings. Major ones include lesbophobia/homohobia/biphobia and the use of lesbophobic/homophobic slurs, substance abuse, ethnic stereotyping, and drugging.