The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey
A Novel
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4.0 • 4 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A propulsive page-turning thriller following the hit reality TV show Garden State Goddesses where secrets are uncovered, intense rivalries surface, and a startling murder propels a producer on a riveting quest for the truth.
On this season of Garden State Goddesses: Getting canceled means getting killed.
When Hope Bennett marries Carmela’s brother, Leo, she becomes not only a Fontana, but a Garden State Goddess—and not everyone is happy. Secrets will be revealed, decades-long rivalries will surface, and a sudden murder will lead to a reality reckoning no one is prepared for—least of all the show’s producer, Eden, who must race to catch a killer and save the most dramatic season of all time.
“Juicy, gossipy, and deliciously vicious, one thing is certain: this New Jersey neighborhood has enough secrets to guarantee renewal. Readers will be clamoring for season two of this funny, dark guilty pleasure.” —KATY HAYS, New York Times bestselling author of The Cloisters
“Like the best, most addictive reality TV, The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey is about people behaving badly—lying, cheating, back-stabbing, and worse. I started reading for all the juicy drama, but it was the murder mystery that had me racing through pages at the end.” —ANA REYES, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the Pines
“Secrets, gallows humor, campy reality TV stars, and an Instagram gossip account called Shady Di—Astrid Dahl’s The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey is the kind of book I wanted to live inside. LOLing and gasping my way through, I nearly wished I’d written it myself!” —ANNA DORN, author of Perfume & Pain
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fledgling showrunner Eden Bennett faces challenges too real for reality TV in this breezy whodunit from Dahl (a pseudonym for Perfume and Pain author Anna Dorn). Eden is taking over the reins of the New Jersey–set megahit Garden State Goddesses as it enters its third season. To shake things up, she introduces an outsider to the show's insular Sicilian American cast: her Californian cousin, Hope, who has married into Garden State's central family, the Fontanas, after Eden introduced her to her now-husband. But Eden may have underestimated the passions that hippie-ish Hope would arouse in everyone from her sharp-tongued new sister-in-law, Carmela, to fan favorite Renee, a jewelry designer who's recently been outed as bisexual and nurtures a crush on Hope. At first, the new conflicts make for great TV; then someone gets killed, forcing Eden to add "gumshoe" to her job description. Dahl, like her protagonist, proves to be an adept ringleader of this comedic circus, but readers will wish her players were slightly less stereotypical—for a novel so sympathetic to sapphic romance, for example, the lone gay male character is a surprisingly flat camp cartoon. Still, mystery fans with a taste for the absurd will have a frothy good time.
