The Other Mrs Miller (Spoiler Warning!)

The Other Mrs Miller, by Allison Dickson, is a twisty thriller where every character has dark secrets and twisted motives.

This review contains spoilers! Without spoilers, my post would be all about how I was so shocked when that guy did that thing, and that made the other guy do the other thing. So, here’s your spoiler warning if you haven’t yet read The Other Mrs. Miller.

So this novel is basically two interlocking stories of stalking and manipulation. At the beginning of the book, Phoebe Miller spends every day drinking at home, alone. With almost nothing to occupy her mind, she notices the same car parked on her street, and quickly determines it doesn’t belong to any of the neighbors, regular visitors, or delivery services. Creepy interludes explain that yes, the person in this car is parking here just stalk Phoebe. There are so many possibilities here, with her evil father and troubled marriage, I could think of so many reasons someone might want to stalk Phoebe.  Still, I guessed pretty quickly who Nadia was in relation to Phoebe, mostly because of their ages: Nadia was either a surprise half-sister or another victim of Phoebe’s father.

Besides watching Nadia watch her, Phoebe also watches the new neighbors move in, and is immediately pulled into their lives.  Sure, it doesn’t make sense that after months of avoiding her actual friends and ignoring all the other neighbors, Phoebe immediately makes friends with Vicki while ALSO immediately boinking Vicki’s teenage son. This is one of those moments where you just have to shrug and decide that people are complicated, because it doesn’t match what we know of Phoebe but it’s necessary for the next stage of drama. And there’s so much drama.

Actually, there are several moments where readers just have to roll with the coincidences or assumptions. Every single person has dark secrets and everyone can be pushed to do awful things. This reminded me of Never Saw Me Coming, too, where every character was a diagnosed psychopath. In The Other Mrs. Miller, the twists are so good, you kind of need to roll with the huge coincidences that make the story work.

And the heart of the story relies on one huge coincidence: Nadia and Wyatt find themselves both next to Phoebe’s bloody corpse, each claiming they have no idea what happened to her, and create an uneasy alliance where they’ll hide the body and pass Nadia off as Phoebe.  Yeah, I warned you this post would have majors spoilers! That stalking beginning was just the warm-up! The swap part reminded me of The Likeness, and again, you just have to go with the close resemblance between two characters to get to the twists and tension. At least there’s a genetic reason for the two half-sisters to look similar. (Or does she? Jake and Vicki both believe Phoebe is dead, but can’t say it, and Ron has barely met her before. Phoebe’s been so isolated before her death that there aren’t a lot of people who’ll notice the swap). It’s tense here, since anything could give Nadia-as-Phoebe away, but it’s also weirdly satisfying to see Nadia get the wealth she wants.

OK, Vicki’s death. I have a fan theory that’s not 100% backed up in the book, but it’s not disproved, either. When Ron is talking to the doctors, what if he’s only pretending to help Vicki? What if he’s really giving them bad advice or even causing Vicki’s death? We already know he’s had medical malpractice suits and we know he and Vicki fight all the time…

Finally, the ending. I loved the final twist with Wyatt, especially because he was such a quiet non-entity at the beginning. Everyone in this story really can be pushed to do awful things, and then even worse things to hide them. Still, I was a little worried about Nadia’s escape plans, even with the incriminating file on Wyatt sent to the police, and I hoped with all her breaking-and-entering experience and body-hiding experience, she could cover her tracks successfully and, uh, I guess start happily stalking and housebreaking in a new country. 

Let me know what you thought of The Other Mrs. Miller, and if you think my theory about Ron could be correct!