Get our Best Book Club Books of 2025 eBook!

Book Summary and Reviews of The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey by Astrid Dahl

The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey by Astrid Dahl

The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey

A Novel

by Astrid Dahl

  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • Published:
  • Jan 2025, 288 pages
  • Rate this book

About this book

Book Summary

A propulsive page-turning thriller following the hit reality TV show Garden State Goddesses where secrets are uncovered, intense rivalries surface, and a startling murder propels a producer on a riveting quest for the truth.

Meet the Garden State Goddesses, the cast of Huzzah's third most popular show:

"I may play for both teams, but when it comes to being real, I always bring my A game." —Renee Ricci

"When life gives me lemons, I make citron presse´ on my yacht in Saint-Tropez." —Birdie St. Clair

"I don't bite, but I do scratch, and these talons are 100 percent Italian." —Carmela Fontana

When Hope Bennett marries Carmela's brother Leo she not only becomes a Fontana, but a Garden State Goddess—and not everyone is happy.

Secrets will be revealed, decades-long rivalries will surface, and a sudden murder will lead to a reality reckoning no one is prepared for, least of all the show's producer Eden who must race to catch a killer and save the most dramatic season of all time.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"Dahl, like her protagonist, proves to be an adept ringleader of this comedic circus, but readers will wish her players were slightly less stereotypical—for a novel so sympathetic to sapphic romance, for example, the lone gay male character is a surprisingly flat camp cartoon. Still, mystery fans with a taste for the absurd will have a frothy good time." —Publishers Weekly

"The over-the-top characters are a perfect representation of the wildly popular Real Housewives franchise. Some moments are genuinely shocking; readers will be surprised by the twists and turns throughout. Dahl's debut entertains from the first page." —Booklist

"Secrets, gallows humor, campy reality TV stars, and an Instagram gossip account called 'Shady Di'—Astrid Dahl's? The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey?is the kind of book I wanted to live inside. LOLing and gasping my way through, I nearly wished I'd written it myself!" —Anna Dorn, author of Perfume & Pain

"Astrid Dahl's The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey is just as deliciously soapy as the shows that inspired it. This book is catty, sexy, and may be fatally addictive." —Zan Romanoff, author of Look and Grace & the Fever

"Like the best, most addictive reality TV, The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey is about people behaving badly—lying, cheating, back-stabbing and worse. I started reading for all the juicy drama but it was the murder mystery that had me racing through pages at the end." —Ana Reyes, New York Times bestselling author of The House in the Pines

This information about The Really Dead Wives of New Jersey was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Astrid Dahl

Astrid Dahl is an author, fangirl, and law school dropout. She lives in Los Angeles, where she plans to die.

More Author Information

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more thrillers...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris
    by Evie Woods
    From the million-copy bestselling author of The Lost Bookshop.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Happy Land
    by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

    From the New York Times bestselling author, a novel about a family's secret ties to a vanished American Kingdom.

  • Book Jacket

    The Fairbanks Four
    by Brian Patrick O’Donoghue

    One murder, four guilty convictions, and a community determined to find justice.

  • Book Jacket

    The Seven O'Clock Club
    by Amelia Ireland

    Four strangers join an experimental treatment to heal broken hearts in Amelia Ireland's heartfelt debut novel.

  • Book Jacket

    One Death at a Time
    by Abbi Waxman

    A cranky ex-actress and her Gen Z sobriety sponsor team up to solve a murder that could send her back to prison in this dazzling mystery.

Who Said...

Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

A C on H S

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.