Audiobook Review: The Mad Wife by Meagan Church

The Mad Wife: A 1950s housewife slowly coming undone under the pressure to be perfect. Read my audiobook review.

The Mad Wife snuck up on me. I thought I was settling in for a quiet 1950s domestic tale—pearls, casseroles, maybe a little light despair—and instead I found myself completely glued to my earbuds. Find out why I rated the audiobook 4/5 stars below.

What is the book about?

They called it hysteria. She called it survival.

Lulu Mayfield has spent the last five years molding herself into the perfect 1950s housewife. Despite the tragic memories that haunt her and the weight of exhausting expectations, she keeps her husband happy, her household running, and her gelatin salads the talk of the neighborhood. But after she gives birth to her second child, Lulu’s carefully crafted life begins to unravel.

When a new neighbor, Bitsy, moves in, Lulu suspects that something darker lurks behind the woman’s constant smile. As her fixation on Bitsy deepens, Lulu is drawn into a web of unsettling truths that threaten to expose the cracks in her own life. The more she uncovers about Bitsy, the more she questions everything she thought she knew—and soon, others begin questioning her sanity. But is Lulu truly losing her mind? Or is she on the verge of discovering a reality too terrifying to accept? [Goodreads.com]

My thoughts:

This was my first Meagan Church book, and wow, she knows how to turn the slow suffocation of mid-century housewife life into something you can’t stop listening to. Lulu Mayfield has perfected her role—gelatin salads, polite smiles, all of it—but you can feel the strain underneath, and Church lets that tension simmer in all the right ways. It’s maddening at times, but… it’s supposed to be.

Susan Bennett’s narration really seals the deal. She gives Lulu this fragile, determined edge that makes the whole story feel painfully real. I kept finding excuses to keep listening—laundry, dishes, reorganizing a drawer I hadn’t thought about in four years. Whatever it took.

And then the ending hit. I did not expect a twist—this isn’t packaged as a thriller—but Church delivers one that genuinely made me stop and stare into space for a moment. It puts the entire story in a new light without feeling cheap or out of place.

If you’re into historical fiction with emotional weight, a slow burn that actually pays off, or audiobooks where the narrator elevates every scene, The Mad Wife is absolutely worth your time. It kept me invested all the way to the last minute—and then some.

Thank you to NetGalley and RBmedia for an advanced reader’s copy; all opinions expressed in this review are my own.

Find me on Goodreads, Fable, and StoryGraph.

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