The Bad Boy's Wife [Hardcover]

Karen Shepard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2004

What happens when you marry the bad boy--the reckless, irresistible cowboy who steals your heart and throws it back to you, the one you should have called it a day with after the affair?

When Cole, a gorgeous ne'er do well horse trainer and stereotypical bad boy, proposes to Hannah, daughter of a wealthy Southern family, it comes as a shock to everyone. After a twenty-year marriage, Cole leaves Hannah for one of her best friends and they play out their passions on a ranch in Kentucky, where old secrets and sentiments spring forth to unsettle their relationship. Caught in the middle are their beloved daughter Mattie, and Georgia, the hired hand debutante who casts their fate.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The dissolution of the 20-year marriage between rich, preppy Hannah and impulsive "bad boy" Cole has done a wicked number on Hannah's head. She has become so vacant and needy that their 10-year-old daughter, Mattie, is suffering the full effects of her parents' breakup, torn between their affections, worried about hurting their feelings, striving to prop up her mother emotionally. Hannah begins to replay in her head the story of her and Cole's relationship, arriving, finally, at the moment of their initial meeting when Cole, a down-on-his-luck horse trainer, and Hannah, the privileged daughter of a wealthy southern family, first connect. Along the way, readers are made privy to scenes of harrowing and disturbing marital discord involving money problems, infidelity, the shifting balance of power, and the difficulty of sustaining connection. In her second novel, after An Empire of Women (2000), Shepard, the wife of novelist Jim Shepard, uses her flashback structure to good effect, tracing the arc of the relationship backwards, from acrimony to heady infatuation. This is domestic fiction done with edge and attitude. Joanne Wilkinson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“The Bad Boy’s Wife is a wonderful novel, compelling, spare, and as suspenseful as any fine mystery, but this is literature, and it has remarkable emotional resonance. [Karen Shepard] writes with such grace that The Bad Boy’s Wife seems to have been waiting somewhere in the world simply for her to reveal it, which is the truest gift a writer can give to any reader.”
-Robb Forman Dew, American Book Award-winning author of Dale Loves Sophie to Death and The Evidence Against Her

“Taut, disturbing and memorable, this portrait of a marriage gone awry gains unusual power and poetry through its deft inversions of the past.”
-Andrea Barrett, National Book Award-winning author of Voyage of the Narwhal and Servants of the Map

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (July 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312318960
• ISBN-13: 978-0312318963
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,265,501 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an absolute must read, July 26, 2004

By 

G. Burda (North Adams, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bad Boy's Wife (Hardcover)

Exceptionally well written. I couldn't put it down and didn't want it to end. The characters are strong - and though they have their faults and sometimes those faults are disturbing - I cared about Mattie, Hannah, and even the bad boy Cole. I was so engrossed in this book that I couldn't put it down, and when I had to, I couldn't wait to get back to it. This book is a must read!

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Summer's Sizzler, July 29, 2004

By 

Robin Lester (New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Bad Boy's Wife (Hardcover)

The first two pages grab you by the throat: the dread of the highway accident, the hasty domestic arrangements of caring for two children, the immediate arousal from the ex-husband's touch, Hannah's willingness to be used. . . .
This is a lovely, awful read and perfectly reflects the human condition. There is much among the characters that falls short of decency and of being good enough, but there are moments of each flawed being's showing gentleness and courage.
Shepard's craft at times amazes with its just-right detail, its refusal simply to entertain, and its exquisite realism.
And, showing the same unerring understanding that marked her debut, AN EMPIRE OF WOMEN, Shepard's creation of ten-year old Mattie is the lynch pin of this infuriating, fascinating, and rewarding novel.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love's Demise, March 8, 2007

By 

UES - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Bad Boy's Wife (Paperback)

The jumping back and forth in time sometimes frustrated and irritated me, but overall I found The Bad Boy's Wife to be a good book: it's beautifully written, and the characters are very real, complex, flawed, intriguing people. A love story and a story of love's demise.