by Dandy Smith
Publisher: Echo Publishing, March 2025
Review
by Robyn Pryor
The Wedding Vow’s bright cover: a woman in a red dress, a bunch of red roses dropped on the floor, petals scattered, caught my immediate attention. From there, the story had me hooked. A dance between the wife, the other women, and the despicable Linden ended in the ultimate crime – murder.
I tore through the book, flipping page after page, unable to stop, desperate to find the truth. It kept me from sleeping to such an extent that I had to set a discipline timer, which I mostly ignored. I spent nights superglued to the couch, knowing I’d be exhausted the next day. As soon as I finished, I gave the book to my husband. He protested that it was too girly, but he still pressed on, hardly coming up for air. Rather than ask me who murdered Linden, or flicking to the end to find out, he turned the pages like someone possessed, in the same way I had.
All the characters were three-dimensional. Linden was a piece of work. I warmed to him at first, but as the story developed, I couldn’t stand him. Even though he loved Verity, she emasculated him, so he drained the other woman of her power to compensate.
There’s a huge contrast between the two main characters, and my feelings about both of them were mixed. All at once, I liked them, I judged their actions, and I couldn’t understand them, not until the last page. Strangely, I felt a bond with both of them.
The wife was the woman many of us aspire to be: rich, powerful and self-assured. She was under the sweet illusion that her marriage was steadfast, even though she was spending a lot of time away on business trips.
The other woman was poor and needy. Even though she played an evil game, I could relate to her deep feelings for Linden, how difficult it would have been for her to let him go. She became more and more dependent on him, isolating herself from her mother and her friends to ensure she was available when it suited him. It was a relationship of control, need and disempowerment.
I’ve experienced a gaslighting relationship with a similar type of man. Fortunately it was deep down in my past. Everyone else thought he was wonderful. I oscillated between love, hate and confusion.
From the outside, the relationships in The Wedding Vow were perfect, but from the inside, both women were reeling with conflict. Linden was a master at his game. Dandy Smith is also a master storyteller. She depicted the relationships, and indeed all of the characters with accuracy and depth, beautifully describing the devastating pain of losing someone close.
Dandy scattered delicious clues throughout the story. One in particular puzzled me, but she refused to answer the niggle in the back of my mind until the last page. The tension was constantly ramped up. I suspected so many people. Baffled to the end, I was hit with such a powerful twist that it blew my mind.
I would highly recommend this novel to women thirty-plus, who love to solve a mystery. Good luck with this one. You’ll need it.
Publisher’s blurb
She is the perfect wife. He is the perfect liar.
Verity and Linden Lockwood vowed to spend the rest of their lives together, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do they part. Five years later they’ve kept their promise to never let their love die, to never slip into becoming one of those couples …
But a year after Linden is brutally and inexplicably murdered in their picture-perfect home, Verity’s world shatters again. They’re not the golden couple she thought they were. Linden betrayed her: he had been having an affair.
Determined to uncover the identity of the other woman, Verity delves into her husband’s life. Everyone is a suspect: her neighbour, her best friend, her assistant … even her cousin. But as she unearths Linden’s shocking secrets, Verity realises she didn’t know her husband at all and the truth might be more dangerous than she realises.
Can Verity expose the other woman before she joins her husband in the morgue?