Lalla can’t pretend she hasn’t missed the adrenaline rush that comes with transgressing. And, as a wife and mother, she’s already an expert multitasker. So disposing of a body, framing a friend, and being the world’s best homemaker should be easy to achieve.
It’s just that her husband seems distracted, her daughter faces an uncertain academic future, and then there is the unexpected intruder in her living room, a stranger she has stabbed seven times. Avoiding the law is the least of her worries—not when she has a past to keep hidden.
Brimming with brio, humor, and just a dash of murder, A Sociopath’s Guide to a Successful Marriage introduces a brilliant new anti-heroine in “the most wildly entertaining novel you'll read this year” (A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in the Window). (Pub Date: Feb 17 2026)
This was quite a fun read, and not the voice I would have expected from a male author. But to be honest, the book didn't keep up very well.
3+.
We start it with Lalla facing a big problem: she just killed someone. And she has no idea who it is and why they tried to attack her. She only knows that it will be hard to prove she was just defending herself after so many times she's hit him. So she'll need to hide the body and continue her plans to save her marriage and her get their daughter into a better school, along with securing a house in Hampstead.
The story is very Desperate Housewives, but Lalla can be very smart one moment and very stupid the other. That's not a bad thing, actually. I like how that prevents her from being superhuman, even if the tone of the story would have made that easy.
My problem with it, overall, was that Lalla isn't good. And of course, I'm not reading this kind of book for a humane character. Lalla is mean all the time and doesn't face any consequences for it. The thing is that, whatever challenges her seems to be there to make her be the better person, or even relatable, even though she herself isn't becoming a better person. She's bad, but everybody else is worse.
Another point, when you start with something so absurd, you expect the development to surprise you even more. And here, even though it wasn't predictable, I think it held back and took the more conservative route. It's already a freak show, you might as well dance with all your might.
I did like this author's style and will be looking forward to more stories, hoping them to be even more daring.
Honest review based on an ARC provided by Edelweiss. Many thanks to the publisher for this opportunity, and big apologies for how long it took me to get to this book...
Rating: 3 out of 5.
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