Book Review: the Ninth Wife

Folklorist single female meets serial husband...I thought this was a recipe for novel perfection. The characters sounded quirky and the plot was enchanting. However, the novel that arrived on my doorstep was very different than the one described to me. While it was "The Ninth Wife", the characters were dull and superficial, and the plot was sluggish at its best times and absurd at its worst. This wasn't anything like the reviews I had read. Still, I plodded through in hopes of finding that novel I had been promised. Alas, it was no where to be found.

The plot of the novel is centered around 35 year old Bess who is beginning to feel like love has passed her by. At her birthday party, she meets an Irish musician and they fall head over heels for each other. Yet, he has a secret...he has been married eight times before. While she knows she loves him, she begins to question how he could have had so many past wives. So she sets out, with an odd array of characters, to find his previous wives and get the real scoop on her boyfriend.

The story alternates between chapters focused on Bess and those written by her boyfriend, Rory. I actually found Rory's chapters to be the most interesting and well written. Sadly, they were interspersed with Bess-centric chapters which were slow, superficial, and (in my opinion) annoying. Bess' grandparents were also intriguing characters who I felt had a lot of potential, yet they were overshadowed by Bess' desire to find love. Not all is lost in this novel. Stolls clearly has some great ideas and has crafted some fantastic characters. Sadly, they do not get to shine because Bess takes center-stage. It is for this reason that I probably will not recommend this book but I anxiously await Stolls next novel as I believe she has great potential and has some fantastic ideas.

-DLP