Breakaway Books

Authored by Sarah Gailey; Published February 2021; Science Fiction

⭐️⭐️⭐️ / 🏖️

Woof. The Echo Wife is the third book I’ve read about the excessive control that men exercise over women in the past three months and I am… depressed. 

In The Echo Wife, a mediocre scientist steals his wife’s research to create a clone of her, without the flaws he perceives in her behavior—in particular, her unwillingness to have a child. Throughout the novel, the clone becomes more and more disturbed that she was created to serve this man, repeatedly questioning “What am I for?” At the same time, the original wife discovers more and more about her husband’s experiments and how they went wrong. It only gets darker from there.

I would hope that society understands by now that women are for more than serving men’s needs. But books like these keep getting written, so I think I may be wrong. So, I can’t recommend this book if you don’t want to think more about that topic. But, it is an interesting psychological thriller, bordering on horror. I wasn’t scared, per se, but it was creepy—the kind of book you don’t want to read alone in the dark, or perhaps the kind of book you don’t want to read lying in bed next to your husband. There are certain somewhat gory images from this novel that will certainly stick with me. 

I’m not sure the author took full advantage of all the twists and turns that could be introduced with the concept of cloning. I imagined many more twists than there actually were in the novel, but this book was less about the action and more about the philosophy beneath it. It was about being alone versus being connected, how we relate to the people closest to us, and who we choose to trust.

The Echo Wife is a novel to meditate on, not to devour. Up to you whether that is to your tastes right now!