The Ex-Wives Club - Sally Hepworth - ★★★.¼

AUTHOR: Sally Hepworth

SERIES: Alibis Collection, #2

GENRE: Short Story.

PUBLICATION DATE: June 2, 2025

RATING: 3.25 stars.

In a Nutshell: The second story in the Alibis collection. Quite entertaining as long as you know what to expect from this author. Better read as a domestic drama than as a thriller, even though the mystery is decent. A nice, quick, one-time read.

Plot Preview:

A reputed chef is found dead in the walk-in freezer at his restaurant. On the night of his death, all three of his ex-wives and his two adult children were present at the restaurant. The former three, because they have a tradition of meeting every Friday for dinner. The latter two, because they work at the restaurant. Each of them has a strong motive to kill the chef, but each of them also has an alibi. Now it is up to Detective Charlene Li to sort through the clues and figure out what happened. If only her assistant weren’t such a nincompoop.

The story comes to us from the third-person perspective of almost all the key characters from two timelines.

This is the second standalone story in the 'Alibis’ series, described on Amazon as “stories about lies, truth, and deception. It’s just a matter of what you can get away with.”

Woohoos:

🥂 83 pages long, but can easily be completed at a go. Nice quick tempo and no drag.

🥂 Great prologue – on par with that of good full-length thrillers. Tougher to do this in a short work!

🥂 Flawed characters whose personalities come out well as the story proceeds. The cast list is fairly extensive for a short story, but I was able to keep them clear in my head.

🥂 Nice use of the shifting narrative perspective. Not a common choice in short fiction as it is trickier to execute in the limited space, but implemented well here.

🥂 The back and forth plot development from two timelines: the night of the murder and the day of the investigation. A good way of uncovering the secrets bit by bit!

IDKs:

🔪 Not a thriller, more like a domestic drama. Then again, all of this author’s “thrillers” are domestic dramas, so I was better prepared for it this time around.

🔪 Mostly typical in its execution. Even though I am not a regular thriller reader, I still found it fairly straightforward, except for the main reveal.

🔪 Regular supply of twists and surprise revelations through the narrative. A few click; many are abrupt.

🔪 The ending is good, but some part of it feels like a deus ex machina.

All in all, this was a fairly entertaining work. It might not stick in my head for long as there’s not much novelty, but it was not boring either.

A good choice for those looking for a quick popcorn domestic-suspense story.

This standalone story is a part of the ‘Alibis’ collection, and is currently available free to Amazon Prime subscribers.