The Bad Boy's Wife

by Karen Shepard

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.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

272 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2004

About the author

Karen Shepard is a Chinese-American born and raised in New York City. She is the author of three novels, An Empire of Women, The Bad Boy's Wife, and, most recently, Don't I Know You? Her short fiction has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Bomb, Failbetter, Glimmertrain, Mississippi Review, and Southwest Review, among others. Her nonfiction has appeared in Self, USA Today, and The Columbia Companion to the 20th Century American Short Story, as well as other anthologies. She has received the William Goyen-Doris Roberts Fellowship for Fiction from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, won Honorable Mentions in Best American Short Stories 1995, 2002 and 2004, was a National Magazine Award Finalist in 2002, and was a recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Grant in 2002. She teaches writing and literature at Williams College in Williamstown, MA, where she lives with her husband, novelist Jim Shepard, their three children and their one very strange dog.

Reviews

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Filled with unlikeable people. Sex acts are substituted for character development. Will they live happily ever after? Who cares?

[Genevieve · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book bounces back and forth in time from divorce, to happy beginnings of the marriage, so on and so forth until you have a very choppy view of the train-wreck marriage. Some of the plot seems to be more to add shock value to the plot rather than really keeping in line with the characters characteristics.

[MBenzz · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this was overall a good book, the main characters Hannah and Cole REALLY got on my nerves. They were not good people. And my first thought when finishing this book was 'Ugh...that was bad'. But then I realized I was letting my opinion of the characters get in the way to much. If you step outside that opinion and look at the story itself...it really is quite good.

The story starts in July 2000 and works backwards. It tells of the inner workings of Hannah and Cole's marriage, and their little girl Mattie. Hannah is an incredibly needy person with ZERO self-respect. She can't possibly have any the way Cole treats her. Now Cole, while he doesn't ever hurt Hannah, and he appears to be a good husband, constantly proclaiming his love for his wife, he does thing's that are really messed up...and Hannah lets him!! Like cheating on her numerous times, and letting him have sex with her the DAY AFTER GIVING BIRTH...she was still in the hospital when they did it! And the sex alone was tiring just reading about it.

Every single day Cole has to have sex... sometimes 2 or 3 times! And Hannah just takes it, whether she wants to or not. I know I'm ranting and raving about how screwed up these people are, but it's hard to explain. While I really didn't like the two main characters, I did like the story. At least Matties part. This poor child is caught in the middle of her feuding parents and just wants life to return to normal.

In the end...I would have to say that I recommend this. I don't know that you'll really like Hannah or Cole any more than I did...but even still, it's hard to put this book down. I would definitely pick up another of Ms. Shepard's books. She really is a very good storyteller.

[Mary]

Did not finish