VBT# The Grass Widow - Vanessa Edwards

VBT# The Grass Widow - Vanessa Edwards - April 2025

You know those reading slumps that creep up on you? The ones where every book you pick up feels like cardboard and nothing seems to spark that familiar excitement? That was me for the past three days. After coming off a particularly good reading streak, I found myself in that dreaded literary limbo where everything felt "blah." It's frustrating when you're a book blogger with deadlines looming and your brain just refuses to connect with anything on your TBR pile.

This morning, staring at my stack of review copies, I decided to give The Grass Widow by Vanessa Edwards a shot. I had a tour date approaching, and sometimes the pressure of a deadline is exactly what you need to push through a slump. I'm happy to report that Vanessa Edwards managed to pull me out of my reading funk, though perhaps not in the way I expected.

The Grass Widow opens with Leonie (who goes by Jane) starting a new job as a cleaner. But this isn't just any cleaning gig – it's revenge served with a side of Hoover attachments. Her target? Hugh Standing, her former boss and lover who had the audacity to make her redundant and end their affair on the same day. Talk about adding insult to injury. Now she's single, jobless, and plotting her comeback while scrubbing toilets.

Meanwhile, Hugh's wife Amanda has hired gardener Simon, and let's just say he's not only tending to her roses – if you catch my drift. The domestic setting becomes a breeding ground for secrets, lies, and manipulation.

Vanessa Edwards then expands her canvas to include other cleaners' stories, creating a web of interconnected characters each driven by their own desperate motivations. There's Tina, whose involvement in her brother-in-law's criminal activities leads to her stealing bank information from clients – a decision that proves fatal. Brenda works next door to Amanda and decides blackmail might be her ticket to easy money, but photographs can capture more than you bargain for. And Simon? Well, he's got ulterior motives that extend far beyond landscaping, and he's willing to lie, steal, and even murder to achieve his goals.

What struck me most about this novel was how it explores the lengths people will go to survive, get rich, or get even. Each character is driven by desperation in their own way, whether it's financial necessity, wounded pride, or pure greed. Vanessa Edwards doesn't shy away from showing how easily ordinary people can slip into morally questionable territory when pushed to their limits.

I'll be honest – at times the book felt quite busy. With so many characters and their individual schemes running parallel, it occasionally felt convoluted. I found myself having to flip back to remind myself which character was which and how their stories connected. Vanessa Edwards juggles multiple storylines competently, but the sheer volume of moving pieces sometimes worked against the narrative's momentum.

That said, this was exactly the kind of easy, engaging read I needed to break through my slump. The pacing kept me turning pages, and while the plot had its tangled moments, Vanessa Edwards maintained enough tension to keep me invested in how all these schemes would ultimately collide.

One unexpected bonus was learning what a "grass widow" actually means and discovering the term's fascinating origins – always a treat for someone who loves etymology as much as I do!

Perfect for: Readers who enjoy domestic thrillers, stories about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, and anyone looking for an engaging page-turner that doesn't require heavy emotional investment.


Amazon: https://amzn.to/3JaX1UC