Despite how frustrating I found The Husbands, it was a compelling read - if only for the reasons that I was hoping against hope that the main character, Nora, would grow some lady-balls and tell her husband exactly what she wanted him to do. Instead, she seems to rely on his psychic powers (he doesn’t have any), and he was clearly happy with her “letting” him do bog-all. Honestly, I was RAGING.

Then it became a bit Stepford Husbands. Which, whilst appearing to be the ideal solution, isn’t really, is it. Although, if my husband was like Nora’s, I’d sign him up straight away.

The story takes a very unexpected turn in the second half, and I was as disturbed by it all as Nora. Dynasty Ranch, Nora’s dream housing destination, becomes a bit of a nightmare. Manipulative doesn’t even cover it.

I would’ve loved a bit more about Dynasty Ranch and a bit less Nora: how things got to be the way that they were could have been a fascinating read as well.

This was a real page turner. Very enjoyable indeed, just as long as you can put up with Nora!

I'm never very good at reading when there's sound in the background - music, TV - but when I was reading this book it was hard to ignore the clanging from all the bells that were ringing inside my head. THE HUSBANDS is a page-turning thriller about how the workload for women (and mothers in particular) is consistently different to what it is for men. Through its cast of characters - and the sympathetic heroine, Nora - it explores all the tiny, seemingly insignificant ways in which parenting for mothers can never be equally met by parenting for fathers. The nicely placed plot looks at what can happen when somebody decides to take real, palpable action on how to make change, and makes the reader think about what they'd be willing to do for an easier life. Chandler Baker's style is easy to read, flows well, and for me personally, was so easy to identify with. A great read.

I read The Stepford Wives earlier this year and loved it, but I think I might have loved The Husbands by Chandler Baker even more. It’s a reversed Stepford Wives re-imagining and I found it to be completely gripping, funny and self-aware.

Nora and her husband Hayden are happily married, they have a young daughter and another baby on the way and are looking to move house to accommodate their growing family. They view a house in Dynasty Ranch, a peaceful suburban community which is seemingly perfect for them. During the process of putting an offer down on this house, Nora and Hayden start to socialise with the residents of Dynasty Ranch. As a lawyer, Nora is also hired to represent one of the neighbours, Penny, in a wrongful death case involving Penny’s husband Richard who died in a house fire not long ago.

Forgetting about the fire for a moment, life in Dynasty Ranch is pretty perfect and Nora is particularly intrigued by how good all of the husbands seem. The husbands adore their wives, help unprovoked around the house and with child raising so that the wives can focus on their careers and always acknowledge that their wives work so hard. Nora is tempted because while her marriage to Hayden is happy, she feels he doesn’t understand how much work she does at home on top of her pretty demanding job.

The deeper Nora looks into the wrongful death case, and the deeper Nora and Hayden become involved with the residents of Dynasty Ranch, the more their lives start to change and Nora begins to question everything.

This was a book full of mystery and intrigue as well as some decent social commentary and humour in parts. I gave it five stars would really recommend this.

A slow burn for me that I left in my to be read list for a long time! Was a good thriller I would have enjoyed a more elaborate ending but still well written

The Husbands is a slow-burn thriller reminiscent of The Stepford Wives. Chandler Bakers writes a thought-provoking domestic thriller. It's entertaining with a layer of humour and sarcasm throughout. The story explores gender roles and the idea of "having it all." Highly recommended!

Ugggghhhhh. I was so disappointed in this! I desperately wanted to love it but it was just so slow and dull and not at all what I wanted, which is a shame as it had a fantastic idea at its heart but was let down by poor execution.

Nora Spangler is exhausted. Working as a lawyer, trying to make partner, she’s pregnant with her second child and the mental load is real. She’s fighting to preserve her marriage by not ‘nagging’ her husband too much to help, but she is getting close to the brink and doesn’t know how much longer she can cope for. The latest thing to add to the stresses on Nora’s life is their search for a new home, until they find the exclusive community of Dynasty Ranch. This is exactly what they’re looking for - a close-knit community, welcoming families and full of dynamic, successful people who befriend Nora, and also engage her legal services to investigate a recent tragic fire that caused the death of one of the residents.

Note embraces the challenge at first, and begins to grow close to the women, envying the work-life balance that they have achieved with their husbands. However, as time passes and she investigates further, she begins to suspect that all may not be as it appears in the surface - but as a stressed out, hormonal, pregnant woman, can she trust her own instincts or is she trying to self-sabotage reaching a balance that she thought was unattainable?

I took a few chapters to really settle into this story, but one I did, I thoroughly enjoyed it! It felt like a very authentic, realistic representation of mental load and how this adversely affects women, and demonstrated how assistance from partners still may not be enough as it doesn’t always cover all of the requirements. It was a week paced story, although it did take a bit of time to settle into the story, but once I had, it rattled along at a good pace. There are strong Stepford wives vibes from the story that I really enjoyed, but I thought it was very well presented - I genuinely didn’t know how it was going to play out in the end.

I would definitely recommend this book and think a lot of people would strongly relate!

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Dystopian and clever. Turns the back on Stepford Wives and makes you think. A lot! I really enjoyed this and I’ve been telling both male and female friends to read it!

Fiesty, Compelling…
A fiesty, compelling page turner in this contemporary suspense with twists aplenty. A slow burn noir of domestic disharmony which skews perspectives. Likened to The Stepford Wives but with husbands and this is not far off the mark, but this is so much more. It’s a timely piece, entertaining and engaging and often laced with a dark humour which is not hard to like.

I usually love domestic thrillers but this wasn't for me. It took a long time to get into the thriller part of the story so I found myself waiting for something to happen. I liked the use of multimedia throughout.

I lost count of the number of nods and wry smiles I did when reading The Husbands by Chandler Baker. Just like in her previous novel, The Whisper Network, I feel like this author has this incredible way of expressing exactly how I feel about so many things in life in exactly the right words. Though I didn’t love the plot of this book, I did love a lot of things about it and I’ll definitely pick up anything she writes in future.

Thanks to the publisher for gifting me a digital copy to review. The Husbands is out now.

Nora is an over-worked and under-appreciated wife, mother and lawyer. The men in her life are testing - her boss expects her to pick up his work (and be thankful for the opportunity!) and her husband ‘helps out’ but never does more than is asked of him. Nora is trying so hard to keep it all together that inevitably some of the plates she’s kept spinning start to drop and it seems like there’s no end in sight to the constant daily grind. But when she goes to take a look at a house in Dynasty Ranch, an exclusive neighbourhood that seems unattainable but is actually well within their reach, her eyes are opened to a different way of living. The women who inhabit the homes there are all highly successful, career focused mothers, whose husbands are eternally attentive and do everything around the house. Nora can’t believe it at first but when the women befriend her and bring her in to their secrets she can’t help but be drawn in. The life they’re offering her seems to be too good to be true - how far is she willing to go to have it all?

Oh this book! I loved it! From start to finish I loved it! I didn’t know whether I was going to even like it to start with, with so many comparing it to The Stepford Wives, I thought it might be a bit twee. I wondered how the author would make it different, how she’d hook me and how she’d bring it all together to finish it off. Now that I’ve read it I can’t believe I didn’t pick it up sooner, Chandler Baker knocked it out of the park. The Husbands is a fantastic novel with characters that will draw you in and keep you there.
As a working mum myself I could absolutely identify with so much of what Nora was thinking and feeling, and the idea of a kind of female utopia sounded amazing to me too. I spent half the time reading it really wanting it to work out for her there (but knowing it wouldn’t) thinking YAAAAS QUEENS, and the other half wanting her to uncover what on earth was going on. As someone who works with dogs too I really loved that they were essentially clicker training the men 😆 that actually made me laugh out loud (and wonder if there was any possibility it might work in real life..😉).
I think it was clear from the outset that it was going to get a little darker as it went on, I just wasn’t sure how Baker would do it, but she did good. I enjoyed the resolution and really liked the last chapter too.

Overall I thought it was an excellent book with a likeable main character who I totally empathised with, and a great ending, The Husbands is an absolute must-read for any mum, working or not!

A domestic thriller with elements of the Stepford Wives, this is an enjoyable read and explores the dynamic between couples in modern society. The ending though, let the story down and the twist was mediocre. However, I shall read more from this authir.

Imagine the Stepford Wives but with husbands and you have some idea of the plot of Chandler Baker's newest book.

This is a book that worked for me on two levels: first it is a really good thriller set in a housing development where everything is just too good to be true. Something is wrong here but you can't quite put your finger on it. However it is paradise and Nora Spangler decides to move here with her husband and daughter.

Nora is a busy working mother who seems to do everything in her home and this is the second level where the book worked for me, this is a very honest and realistic look at the live of the average working family where, despite the fact that most men are more domesticated than their fathers, the bulk of the emotional and physical labour falls to women. Baker covered this so well in her previous book The Whisper Network and does another fantastic job of shining a light on the way women continue to be treated without it reading too much like a social commentary.

As a working woman, I found myself torn because I wanted everything to work out in the end but, to be totally honest, I'm not quite sure who I wanted it to work out for and I admire Baker for writing a book that doesn't give the reader an easy side to align to.

Some of what Nora has to say will probably resonate with you.

Nora has to do it all, even the things her husband says he will do and all while taking care of a child, being pregnant and working as a lawyer. When she finds a housing development with a dream home for sale it seems like all her potential neighbours have helpful husbands, and she's missing out.

All is not perfect in the neighbourhood though as one of the houses has burnt down and a previous occupant is dead. Nora takes the case to find out what happened but as the story progresses maybe she's bitten off more than she can chew in more ways than one.

Not an edge of your seat thriller but a good read. I sort of guessed where this book was going, like I had read this storyline before. I hoped it was going to have a twist if it was going there. There is a backstory as to why Nora thinks she isn't the perfect Mother either. I was a little disappointed as it got predictable, until the last few lines, and that made the book worth reading to the end.

I couldn’t work out what to make of The Husbands - it had an interesting plot line and some compelling parts to it but ultimately wasn’t sure if it was supposed to be a thriller or a black comedy.

I’m honestly gutted that I didn’t get to rave about this one closer to its publication date because it really is great. This is a deeply compelling and suspenseful novel about motherhood, gender roles and what it takes to truly “have it all”. So you have this social commentary throughout about how society perceives women but especially women who are also mothers. It tackles internalised misogyny, inequality in the workplace and at home as well as being incredibly candid about all the things that mothers have to manage on a day-to-day basis. As a mother myself, I could relate to that societal pressure and those feelings of never being quite “enough”.

That said, I think the title misses the mark a bit. The husbands in question are very much in the background, rarely seen or heard. (Maybe this is satirical?) Even the mystery itself relates more to a suspicious death in the neighbourhood as opposed to the husbands and how they are actively defying gender roles and supporting their career wives. A title focusing more on the women or the neighbourhood itself would have felt more apt, in my opinion.

All in all, this was a page turner with all the makings of a solid thriller. It features a strong but relatable lead who is also incredibly human. And the mystery makes you suspicious of everyone and their motives. There were so many twists that I didn’t see coming including the big reveal about why the husbands are so supportive. I had no idea how that particular aspect was going to pan out and I’d expected it to be more sci-fi than it actually was.

I’ve written before about my hatred of taglines when it comes to marketing for books. ‘A twist you WILL NEVER SEE coming’ is a particular bugbear – well now you’ve told me there’s a twist I’m going to be spending my entire read looking for it and scrutinising every character and interaction! Inevitably when this happens I think I’ve got the twist worked out, only to find out the actual ending isn’t as good as the one I’d guessed. ‘A hilarious read’ also annoys me, it heightens my expectations so if I only find myself chuckling half-heartedly I come away disappointed. If I’d known nothing about the book I might have been caught off-guard by the humour and enjoyed it a lot more!

The Husbands falls into this trap in another way with a blurb that boasts from the outset – ‘Little Fires Everywhere meets The Stepford Wives’. Now this may be ok if you have not heard of those two books, but they usually pick titles that are engrained into pop culture and highly popular. I’ll come back to why this is problematic in a moment…

The Husbands follows wife Nora who is a high-powered attorney trying to walk that difficult balance of career and home-life. She feels like her marriage is stagnating as her husband does not help enough around the home. They visit an open house for a neighbourhood where they find the perfect home and would be surrounded by top tier career women all with very home-dedicated husbands who just want to do their best for the women in their lives. The book is a slow build, there’s a lot of hints that things aren’t quite right, a fire to be investigated and some shady red herring characters along the way. It’s only until right at the end that the twist is revealed as to what is really going on. However, the blurb informs us from the outset that this book is like The Stepford Wives and if you’ve read or watched the movie you know exactly what that means! Rather than the intended slow-burn, uneasy read for most of the book, I guessed the twist from a few pages in and the tension build just got a bit boring! If this comparison hadn’t been made I might not have guessed until a lot later in to the book. There is a final twist right at the end which I really enjoyed but I was sad to have the main ending spoiled by the book’s own blurb!

Although the book is a bit predictable it does make some excellent points about the imbalance of domestic roles in modern marriage – particularly with women also trying to have high powered careers. From the authors notes at the end it seems that this comes from personal experience and this really shines through. One phrase has really stuck with me, to paraphrase - ‘how can domestic life truly be split 50/50 when one side has never experience 100%?’ It’s a really interesting question and I can see how frustrating it must be for women, even without having had the experience of motherhood. Although I enjoyed (not sure that’s the right word) these musings, I didn’t think the article and comment style approach that was used for some chapters worked though.

Overall, The Husbands is a well written, engaging read but is sadly spoiled by its own marketing strategy. Thank you to NetGalley & Little Brown Book UK – Sphere, for the chance to read the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I received an ARC of this book via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Nora's family is expanding, a new baby on the way, a house that is too small to accommodate it, a high pressure job and a less than domestically accomplished husband all leave her mired in problems. Suddenly a house comes onto the market that might solve all her problems at once but there is more than meets the eye to this community. Alongside this is an event only referred to as the "accident" obviously Nora is at fault but what happened takes some time to be elucidated.

I am somewhat conflicted about the book that reads like a Stepford wives redo - but with the roles reversed. The narrative feels much more sinister and I have little feeling for most of the characters. The online group / emails / FB whatever felt like something that had no real place in the book, added nothing to the narrative and in fact made it feel disrupted. I cannot say I liked the book yet I did feel the build up of suspense and a sense of dread throughout and I suppose that means the author was achieving what he set out to do. The ending chapters and the epilogue felt like a bit of a cop out after all the rising tension.

I would read more by this author but cannot really rate this one higher than 3 stars

One of the most intricate portrayals of the man/woman dynamic in marriage and parenthood. Exquisitely observed. Deliciously unfiltered. Brilliantly written.

The Husbands is a book that I know so many women will be shouting, "Yes, yes yes" at as they read it. I certainly was. An important political message is contained in this very clever story. And the epilogue has a brilliant little twist waiting for us.

The plot is complex, but the skill of a good writer is making even the complex simple to follow. I was hooked from the first words. I did not want to put it down to sleep. I adored it. Smart, sophisticated, wry, and deliciously dark.