July 19th, 2026
Home | Log in!
Welcome to FreshFiction

Are you a reader
or an author?

Help us personalize your experience. Choose your role below.
You can always change this later using the switcher button.

or

You can switch anytime using the floating button.

Limited Time Fresh Fiction Access

Exclusive Marketing Opportunities for Authors

Curious about how Fresh Access helps authors gain more visibility and connect with active readers?

Discover premium promotional opportunities, enhanced exposure, and author-focused services designed to help your books stand out.

Read More →
On Top Shelf
📚 New Books This Week 📰 Latest News โ˜€๏ธ๐ŸŒ™ Summer Days / Summer Nights Giveaways 🎪 Reader Games

Escape Into Adventure, Romance, Suspense, and Magic This July

Find Your Perfect July Escape

Slideshow image


Since your web browser does not support JavaScript, here is a non-JavaScript version of the image slideshow:

slideshow image
Sink your teeth into the first novel in the #1 New York Times bestselling Sookie Stackhouse seriesโ€”the books that gave life to the Dead and inspired the HBOยฎ original series True Blood.


slideshow image
#1 New York Times bestselling author Sandra Brown delivers a new signature sexy suspense about a detective seeking justice for his murdered wife with the help of a psychotherapistโ€ฆwhile fighting an undeniable attraction to her.


slideshow image
Open the book. Enter the nightmare. Escape is no longer guaranteed.


slideshow image
Under Wyoming skies, love doesn't care about titles.


slideshow image
Family secrets, lost love, and a mystery hidden beneath the sea.


slideshow image
The bear is unleashed. The danger is real. The attraction is impossible to resist.

WIFE 22

Wife 22, June 2012
by Melanie Gideon

Ballantine Books
400 pages
ISBN: 034552795X
EAN: 9780345527950
Kindle: B005OCYRLC
Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List

Purchase

"A Unique Tale of Marriage and Family Relationships"

Fresh Fiction Review

WIFE 22
Melanie Gideon

Reviewed by Kathyrn Little
Posted July 1, 2012

Women's Fiction Contemporary

Alice Buckle is a typical housewife. She doesn't have the most exciting life, but it's bearable. Her typical schedule is interrupted, however, when she decides to participate in a research study. She is dubbed "Wife 22" and put in contact with "Researcher 101" who is supposed to answer her questions about the research along the way. Before long, her chat with Researcher 101 begins to feel illicit and she gets more and more secretive. How long can Alice keep this up before her family catches on or she decides to take things with Researcher 101 too far?

Alice's character was okay. She was hard to connect to because she was so analytical about her children, yet failed to make an important connection about her daughter. She didn't seem to be trying with her husband anymore, and her marriage wasn't holding up well. Much of her energy went into this research study.

William, her husband, comes off as a little too brusque and forceful at times, but readers will love him by the end of WIFE 22. Readers will be introduced to multiple other characters. For the most part, the characters are well-developed and dynamic, readers may wish that Alice was more likable.

The plot itself is very unique. The title makes it sound like either a formidable divorced man or polygamy, but WIFE 22 is anything but those two things. WIFE 22 takes a look at what happens when a marriage is slowly eroding and how social media, like Facebook, can affect relationships.

WIFE 22 is hard to put down and the ending will satisfy you.

Learn more about WIFE 22

SUMMARY

For fans of Helen Fieldingโ€™s Bridget Jonesโ€™s Diary and Allison Pearsonโ€™s I Donโ€™t Know How She Does It comes an irresistible novel of a woman losing herself . . . and finding herself again . . . in the middle of her life.

Maybe it was those extra five pounds Iโ€™d gained. Maybe it was because I was about to turn the same age my mother was when I lost her. Maybe it was because after almost twenty years of marriage my husband and I seemed to be running out of things to say to each other.
 
But when the anonymous online study called โ€œMarriage in the 21st Centuryโ€ showed up in my inbox, I had no idea how profoundly it would change my life. It wasnโ€™t long before I was assigned both a pseudonym (Wife 22) and a caseworker (Researcher 101).
 
And, just like that, I found myself answering questions.
 
7. Sometimes I tell him heโ€™s snoring when heโ€™s not snoring so heโ€™ll sleep in the guest room and I can have the bed all to myself.
61. Chet Baker on the tape player. He was cutting peppers for the salad. I looked at those hands and thought, I am going to have this manโ€™s children.
67. To not want what you donโ€™t have. What you canโ€™t have. What you shouldnโ€™t have.
32. That if we werenโ€™t careful, it was possible to forget one another.
 
Before the study, my life was an endless blur of school lunches and doctorโ€™s appointments, family dinners, budgets, and trying to discern the fastest-moving line at the grocery store. I was Alice Buckle: spouse of William and mother to Zoe and Peter, drama teacher and Facebook chatter, downloader of memories and Googler of solutions.
 
But these days, Iโ€™m also Wife 22. And somehow, my anonymous correspondence with Researcher 101 has taken an unexpectedly personal turn. Soon, Iโ€™ll have to make a decisionโ€”one that will affect my family, my marriage, my whole life. But at the moment, Iโ€™m too busy answering questions.
 
As it turns out, confession can be a very powerful aphrodisiac

EXCERPT

No excerpt available.

BOOK SERIES


 

 

 

© 2003-2026 off-the-edge.net  all rights reserved Privacy Policy