This review is for the audio book version of The Other Woman by Hank Phillippi Ryan. This book is the first in a series about disgraced news reporter turned newspaper journalist Jane Ryland and her friend, Detective Jake Brogan. It is a fast paced thriller, full of political intrigue, family drama, jealousy, and unrequited lust. It isn’t groundbreaking, but it was entertaining enough to pick up the second in the series.
The book begins with Jane, freshly unemployed after getting her employer sued, interviewing for a job at a Boston paper, and Jake investigating a string of deaths the paper seems determined to attribute to a serial killer. As Jane works to find interesting angles on the story of a highly contested Senatorial election, she and Jake begin to suspect their mysteries intersect. Is someone in the campaign killing women connected to a candidate? Or is there something more connecting the victims?
The story is tightly plotted, with enough suspense to make it exciting. The two main characters are mostly likeable, without being perfect. Jane sometimes acts in ways that made me cringe, but they are in keeping with her character and not malicious. The mysteries were sufficiently resolved, and though I had my guesses, I wasn’t quite right.
The reader of this book was great, giving enough personality to each character and making it easy to follow the action.
All in all, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it as a beach read, or an audio book to pass the time.