Jenny’s Pick of the Week: Happy Wife

As summer 2025 winds down and Labor Day weekend approaches, no book captures the moment better than Happy Wife by Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores. This striking debut deserves all the praise its received this summer, and acts as the perfect seasonal send-off: sharp, addictive, and impossible to put down.

Settling into the glittering world of Winter Park, Florida, Nora Davies thinks she’s finally found her happily ever after. After years of scraping by as a country club employee, she falls for—and marries—Will Somerset, a charming, handsome, and wildly successful trial attorney. But her fairytale ending takes a sharp turn when she wakes up the morning after Will’s lavish 46th birthday party to find his side of the bed empty, and Will nowhere to be found.

As the days slip by with no sign of her husband, suspicion begins to coil itself around Nora—the newly minted, much younger wife of one of society’s sweethearts. To Winter Park’s elite, she has always been an interloper, a pretty outsider who married into privilege but never quite earned her place at their tables. And, in her husband’s absence, their whispers grow sharper: was she simply naïve, or has something darker been lurking beneath her pretty surface all along?

Told in alternating timelines between the dreamy early days of their romance and a tense present-day investigation, Happy Wife pulls back the curtain on the illusions of wealth, privilege, and beauty. It’s a smart and stylish story that explores how quickly appearances can unravel, and how dangerous secrets can be. If you’re looking for a twisty character-driven mystery with bite, Happy Wife will earn its spot in your weekend bag.

Filled with all the delicious accoutrements we crave from a high society thriller, Happy Wife will appeal to fans of The Perfect Couple, The House Across the Lake, and Big Little Lies.