This is Whodunnit Wedneday, if you’d like to join in just grab the picture and post on your blog putting your link in the comments below!  The theme this week is Gone Girl clones or the marketing of books that way.  I thought about that as I read The Silent Wife by A.S.A. Harrison, one of the many books marketed or talked about as “for fans of Gone Girl”>

This is the next in a long line of books that are being trumpeted as the next Gone Girl.  It seems that every book with a dysfunctional marriage and some twist surrounding the murder is labeled Gone Girl-esque.  I think this is getting to be pretty lazy marketing, just a way to tag on to the Gone Girl money train.

This book is only like Gone Girl in that it is a psychological story with a damaged husband and wife and that infidelity seems to be a catalyst for the events in the story.  The similarites really end there.  Jodi is a stay at home wife and part time therapist, who is floating around in a whole wide ocean of denial.  Todd, her husband, is a self made man who works hard and now feels entitled to what he wants, including a mistress.  Both of these characters have tunnel vision and although they spend  a lot of time in their own heads, they don’t really spend that time analyzing how their actions and inactions impact others.  In fact, they seem shocked by some of the outcomes of their actions, that anyone else would have seen coming.

There is a murder and a twist.  There is no real sense of closure, but that echoes what often happens in real life.  Real life is messy and often doesn’t have nice neat endings.  Well written with strong characters, who are fully developed, if flawed, this is a good read for fans of Gone Girl 😉 if they go into it not expecting a carbon copy and for psychological mystery fans.

So, what do you think about the Gone Girl phenomenon in book advertising? Over done or not?  Do you pick up books advertised as the next Gone Girl?