Book Review: The Hunting Wives | May Cobb | Sneak Peak of TV Series

Wickedly juicy fun!

Grab an ice cold beverage and your sunglasses, because we are heading to a small town in Texas with big secrets… If you like books about rich people behaving badly, The Hunting Wives by May Cobb is your next read! If that isn’t enough of a reason to pick this book up, The Hunting Wives is currently filming for a limited series that will premiere on Starz! Read on for my thoughts about the book followed by what I think we can expect from the television series.

About the Book | The Hunting Wives

Sophie is B-O-R-E-D

When Sophie O’Neill left her enviable career and city lifestyle in Chicago to move to a small Texas town with her husband Graham and her son Jack, she envisioned having the time and space to actually enjoy life with her family. It doesn’t take long for Sophie to realize perhaps she has a bit too much time. She spends her days gardening in the oppressive Texas heat, playing with her son, and working to start up a lifestyle blog. She has one close friend Erin, but she misses a bit of glamour in her life. In other words? She’s completely bored.

Sophie finds a new hobby

Sophie has seen Margot Banks around town. Margot is glamorous, alluring, and gorgeous—Sophie can’t help but stare when she sees her, but she hasn’t found a way to meet her yet. Until she spots an upcoming fundraiser Erin is planning that will be held at Margot’s in-law’s estate. Erin gladly provides her tickets, and Sophie finally gets a chance to meet Margot and her circle of friends—Callie, Tina, and Jill. After Sophie proves herself interesting to Margot, she’s invited to join the group on Friday night for a shooting club. The women call themselves the Hunting Wives, and they go out to Margot’s lake house and practice shooting…among other things.

Sophie spirals out of control

The Hunting Wives don’t just get together to practice shooting and have a few drinks. Sophie is soon pulled into their dark and dangerous world of partying. Sometimes the women hook up with men who aren’t their husbands, though they never go all the way (allegedly). It’s just a bit of fun, right? But soon Sophie is staying out way later than she should, drinking too much, and engaging in some flirtation that definitely crosses the line. But she’s not interested in any of the men they meet, she’s interested in Margot. Maybe even obsessed? When a teenage girl is found murdered where the Hunting Wives meet—Sophie finds herself identified as a suspect. As her life spins out of control, Sophie doesn’t know if she can salvage anything… did one of the women set her up?

Review | The Hunting Wives

Who will this book appeal to?

I always like to be clear about what type of book to expect is so readers can go into it with the right mindset. This is a book about a group of women who behave very badly. They are completely out of control and reckless. For readers like me, seeing the lengths they will go to is part of the fun. It’s fiction, and I don’t need to like the characters to enjoy them. May Cobb did something impressive with this novel—I was both repulsed by and fascinated with these women—especially Margot. I didn’t want to put the book down! This served to help the reader understand Sophie better and realize that two things can be true simultaneously: (1) Sophie knows she needs to stay away from Margot, and (2) Sophie can’t resist being around Margot.

Every word of this book is carefully crafted to elicit a reaction from the reader. This book is steamy, provocative, salacious, gripping, and twisted. These women are flawed. They are outrageous. They act in ways that blew my mind. Cobb is brazenly unafraid of writing an unlikable character, and these characters are deliciously unlikable in the best way. I devoured every twisted, juicy moment of it. If you need to like the characters in a book and have them make good decisions, this probably isn’t for you. But if you are looking for a peek into the scandals of wealthy, bored, desperate housewives behaving very badly, this is your book.

What is going on with the protagonist, Sophie?

Sophie was a flawed and richly-developed character. Cobb builds a solid backstory for Sophie that makes some of her indiscretions understandable, though perhaps not forgivable. We learn that Sophie has major attachment issues from childhood, and this led to a pattern of her seeking out highly unstable relationships. After putting in the work to break the cycle, Sophie acknowledged her destructive pattern and began to make better choices—this led her to her marriage with Graham. And as you’ll find out, Graham is close to perfect. He understands that Sophie is struggling after the move, and he supports and encourages her new friendships (even though it often means she is out most of the night and he is home with their son).

Sophie is an example of someone who can do the work through therapy and life choices, but also find that those tendencies engrained is us as children can be difficult to break away from. Sophie recounts several instances where she was tempted to go back to her old ways, and how she shut them down. Unfortunately, Sophie doesn’t recognize that Margot herself plays into those same insecurities that led her to make poor decisions in relationships. Sophie thinks that by avoiding going too far with the men that Margot throws at her, she’s still on the right side of the line. As outsiders we can clearly see that she may be able to resist random men, but she can’t resist the “bad boy” type—or should I say “bad girl”, because Margot is actually quite similar to previous subjects of Sophie’s attention. The only difference is, this time it’s a woman.

Margot embodies exactly the type of alluring figure that triggers Sophie to self-destruct. For some people, being happy and secure is so foreign from how they grew up that they can’t help but destroy those good things. People with backgrounds like Sophie sometimes seek those destructive relationships because it’s their security blanket.

The most relatable part of Sophie (in my opinion) is her desperation to be in Margot’s friend group. Most of us have had the experience of being new and struggling to make friends, or being outside of a group and wishing we could be part of it. Sophie may take her behavior to the extreme, but her willingness to do anything to be friends with Margot has an authenticity to it that is heartbreaking and fascinating in equal measure. In every way that Graham and Erin represent Sophies good side—the side that wants to be a good wife, mother and friend—Margot represents her dark side—the side that wants to live recklessly and wild. The question is—which side will win?

What is going on with Margot?

Margot truly fascinated me. Through Cobb’s expert writing, I could feel the pull of Margot. Not in the sense that I wanted to be with her as Sophie does, but I wanted her to stay front and center in the story, and felt a void when she’d leave. Margot is one of those characters who has the “It” factor. Everyone wants to be around her (with the exception of Erin). Erin sees straight through Margot to the ego-driven, selfish person inside. Margot isn’t all bad—there were things that made me empathize with her and even like her at times. However, Margot isn’t a character who is capable of caring for another person as much as she cares about herself. This quality is exactly what wreaks havoc on the women and men in her sphere.

Sophie is beyond obsessed with Margot. The obsession starts before she has actually met Margot. The early chapters chronicle Sophie looking Margot up on social media, searching through mutually tagged photos with Erin so she could see more of her, and nearly tagging herself on a picture of Margot’s cleavage when she tried to zoom in (LOL). After they meet, things escalate. Margot is that perfect mix of pulling someone in and then pushing them away over and over again. When Sophie is within Margot’s circle, its warm and intoxicating. When she’s outside, she’s desperate to get back in. Her self-destruction is a Sophie-problem—we can’t blame that part on Margot—but Margot is also aware of Sophie’s obsession and uses it to manipulate her.

Why did I love it?

The Hunting Wives is a perfect mix of sexy, steamy, dangerous, dramatic, and unhinged that I found irresistible. This was actually my third time reading it—I read it right when it published (when I was taking a blogging break), and again with a book club. I reread it this time when I heard the television series started filming because I wanted to refresh the story, write a proper review, and see the book through the lens of the casting decisions—more on that shortly!

I barely touched on the central mystery to this story, but it’s gripping and horrifying at the same time. A tiny spoiler here that is revealed very early in the book, so it won’t detract from your reading experience—Margot is having a steamy flirtatious relationship with Jill’s teenage son that is hotter than a Texas summer. This part actually made my skin crawl, but it also added to the tension in the plot. We learn that previously Jill got an inkling that something had happened between Margot and her son Brad. Jill later threw a drink in Margot’s face, and Margot iced Jill out of the group for three months until Jill was apologizing to Margot. See what I mean about Margot’s power to attract people?

I bring this plot line up because the teenager that is found dead is tangentially linked to the situation—the murdered girl had been romantically involved with Brad. This made the murder much more interesting. Who was behind it and what was the motive? In theory Margot should have the strongest motive of the five women, but that motive doesn’t hold up well on closer inspection. Margot finds fun in the game, not in the relationship. Why would she care about what else a random fling does? Sophie becomes the prime suspect, and she doesn’t have a great alibi. This happened on one of many nights that she drank too much and lost chunks of time while with the girls. The problem is that the women all have an alibi—so who set her up? Was it one of the boys? Her husband? One of the other women? Erin? The creepy neighbor? Margot’s husband? Or was it an inconvenient coincidence? I could go on and on because I spiraled through so many theories while reading this book! I even considered if Sophie actually did commit the murder. After all, Sophie is a known liar.

The other main piece that I enjoyed was watching the dynamic between Sophie and her husband Graham throughout the book. Sophie and Graham start with a seemingly perfect relationship. However, as the book goes on, Sophie’s obsession with Margot is slowly unraveling her marriage. Graham may not know it yet, but Sophie kept crossing new lines as things progress, pushing the boundary further and further until it might snap. I was anxiously reading, wondering if Sophie would be able to pull herself out before everything went too far.

There is never a dull moment with the Hunting Wives! Dramatic, racy, sinister, and scandalous—this book will have you in disbelief with each new chapter. Best read with a cocktail by a pool, read on to hear what we know so far about the television adaptation!

TV Adaptation | The Hunting Wives on Starz

Early casting news

This book is just begging for a television adaptation, so I am excited it was not only picked up, but has crossed that barrier that so many book adaptations get stuck on—actually moving forward to production! Brittany Snow has been cast to play Sophie and Malin Akerman has been cast to play Margot. These casting choices are amazing in my opinion. Brittany Snow’s past work (most famous from the Pitch Perfect trilogy) proves that she’ll be able to capture the essence of Sophie—a woman doing her best to live life as a good girl but who can’t help but regress to her old ways when she is pulled into Margot’s circle. Meanwhile Ackerman has played these types of alluring characters before (most famously in Twenty-Seven Dresses and Billions). It will be fun to see her playing the dark side of that character type, many of her previous roles have had a lighter feel to them.

A few other casting decisions have been announced—Dermot Mulroney will play Margot’s husband Jed (a perfectly dreamy choice). Evan Jonigkeit will play Sophie’s husband Graham (again, perfect casting for the solid and supportive character). Katie Lowes (Scandal and Inventing Anna) was announced to play Jill (I absolutely love this casting choice!). Jill is a fascinating character who I didn’t talk much about in my review, but who is a good addition to the friend group. She’s more wholesome than the rest of the Hunting Wives in a way. She feels like she was probably the Sophie of the group before Sophie joined, desperate to be part of Margot’s circle. George Ferrier will play Jill’s son Brad—I’m not super familiar with him so I don’t have an opinion yet but he looks like a solid choice for the role. Jamie Ray Newman was cast to play Callie—another exciting choice. Callie is Margot’s best friend and right hand woman. She’s skeptical of Sophie joining the group and seems reluctant to share Margot’s attention.

What can we expect?

Here are a few things we can expect from the television series based on early media coverage. First, the series was picked up for eight episodes, so I anticipate that some storylines and characters will be much more fleshed out in the series compared to the book. Jill and Callie were already named in the second wave of casting announcements, so I expect their characters to get more screen time than in the book. We don’t have word yet on who will play Tina (the fifth member of the Hunting Wives), so she may stay as a side character or not appear at all. I actually enjoyed Tina’s role in the story, so I hope she makes an appearance.

Second, I noticed that in the latest casting announcement some of the relationships have changed. Callie’s character will be married to the sheriff (played by Branton Box), which adds quite a bit of complexity to the murder investigation. There is a police detective (Detective Flynn) who had a fairly prominent role in the second half of the book, but the relationship between the sheriff and Callie didn’t exist. Callie was territorial over Margot and somewhat cold towards Sophie, and her connection to the sheriff certainly won’t help! Meanwhile Chrissy Metz (This is Us) is cast to play a character named Starr who is the mother to the teenage girl who gets murdered. Starr also wasn’t a character in the novel, and is described as “a proud working-class woman who’s active in her church”. Jill’s character is described as “the wife of a minister and queen of the mega church”. Religion wasn’t a central theme in the book, so this is another layer to the story that promises to add new drama.

I love that they are adding the layers of religion and what is described as the mega-church that seemingly carries quite a bit of power in this small town. It feels authentic to many small towns in Texas (and across the country), and it also builds out the plot in a way that added complexity and richness to the characters and their dynamics. This is the right way to go, rather than trying to stretch the source material too thin. Another thing I noticed is that there has not been a casting announcement for Erin. I already mentioned Tina not getting cast yet, so there are certainly more decisions to be made.

If Erin isn’t included in the story, that alters the tension surrounding Sophie’s character. I mentioned in my review of the book how Graham and Erin represent the life Sophie should prioritize—the one where she is a loving mother, wife, and friend. Erin is a beacon of light and the moral voice of reason Sophie should be listening to. Erin is often described as positive and joyful to be around, as well as devoted to charity work and acts of service. Erin plays an important part because she not only introduces Sophie to Margot, but Sophie pulls further away from their friendship the closer she gets to Margot. Erin is a barometer for how far Sophie has fallen into this dangerous group. I wonder with the changes to the characters if Starr or Jill might end up playing that aspect of Erin’s character? I guess we will have to wait and see!

I’ll certainly be updating this if more news comes out that is noteworthy, but so far I’m excited to see how the book is adapted to the screen!

About the Author | May Cobb

May Cobb grew up in the piney woods of East Texas where MY SUMMER DARLINGS, THE HUNTING WIVES and BIG WOODS are set. After college, she moved to San Francisco where she studied Victorian Literature for her Master’s, and gravitated towards that era’s detective novels, known as “sensation novels”, such as Wilke Collins’ THE WOMAN IN WHITE. She then lived in Los Angeles for a few years where I worked for filmmaker/writer Ron Shelton and his wife, the actress Lolita Davidovich.

Cobb currently live in Austin, Texas, with her husband and son where the family enjoys traipsing around the area’s many beautiful parks. Cobb also enjoy napping, staring into space, making to-do lists for to-do lists, shoveling cookies down her throat when writing a particularly difficult scene (and even when she’s not), wearing PJ’s as often as she can get away with and collapsing into bed at the end of a day with a great book.

May Cobb’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Rumpus, Austin Monthly, and Texas Highways Magazine.