Book Review: His other wife

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Synopsis:

Jacob and Deanna are a power couple. Aliyah is Deanna’s best friend…whom Jacob wants to marry.

Expanded and continued beyond Umm Zakiyyah’s popular online series by the same name, His Other Wife is a story about love and betrayal, faith and personal crisis, and withstanding deep emotional wounds.

Jacob is a successful businessman and college professor, and his wife Deanna is a renowned marriage counselor and author. Together they are their Muslim community’s power couple. Aliyah is Deanna’s recently divorced best friend who has just accepted a position at the college where Jacob works—and who is the unwilling recipient of Deanna’s constant unsolicited relationship advice, particularly that Aliyah needs to learn how to hold a marriage together and keep a man from ever thinking about marrying another woman. But their friendship takes a difficult turn when Aliyah receives a phone call from her uncle saying that Jacob is interested in marrying her as a second wife—without Deanna’s knowledge

His other wife by Umm Zakkiyyah is a well structured novel. It contains multiple themes which do get a little tricky to keep up with. All in all an interesting read, but a little too many themes that don’t really seem relevant to the storyline – Would have been a more pleasant read if it contained fewer overlapping themes. Its quite a lengthy novel, so you may need to clear up a chunk of time. As a result of too subplots and themes, the readers interest may dwindle. The dialogs were at times difficult to keep up with as they seemed more like lectures instead of conversations. All the characters are very well rounded and created in great description and attention to detail. The novel portrays alot of research in psychological behavior and patterns and draws light on the contemporary struggles of divorcees, remarriage as well as polygyny.

Umm Zakkiyyah weaves her words marvelously yet this book isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Some novels flow easily and some become rather  laborious. This would fair better as a trilogy.