Happy Release Day!
Congrats Lisa
on release today of
Hello Wife!
Hello Wife by Lisa K. Friedman
Women's Literature & Fiction, 274 pages
Published September 30, 2025, by Santa Fe Writer's Project
Single, unfulfilled and well into middle age, long-troubled Charlotte Lansing desperately reaches for love and acceptance.
When she announces her engagement to an unemployed morphine addict, her family falls into a tailspin. Her mother is determined to prevent disaster, her father seeks to mend the growing chasm, and her sister stubbornly hopes that their sibling bonds can keep Charlotte safe. But Charlotte resists all this because she thinks she is finally happy. Ultimately, all her loved ones can do is watch as Charlotte disappears, slowly and inevitably, into her new husband’s illness.
In this bittersweet novel of determination, love, and familial bonds, Lisa Friedman takes listeners into the insidious world of prescription drug abuse, showing the havoc opioids can wreak in our lives, and revealing the grace and care given to us at our lowest moments.
My thoughts about Hello Wife ~~
(I love to note the first lines of the books I'm reading. First lines can really grab a reader's attention and I love seeing where the author takes the reader after their first lines.)
First line—"My wedding dress was made by a costume designer I met while buying weed at the 7-Eleven one February, which is where I met Jimbo, my husband to be."
Hello Wife is a heartbreaking tale of the life of a person in the throes of addiction, a person craving drugs, love, and a life time of acceptance for who she is. Charlotte is just looking for the love of her life and if he comes with a drug problem, that is something she can overlook for the love she craves. As his lifestyle becomes her lifestyle, her family and friends become alienated and withdraw from her life. Is this really the life she wants, and needs? Oh, the power of drugs.
I had a hard time liking any of the characters in this story so that made it a hard read for me. I really never connected with anyone, and I feel like I should have had more empathy for what Charlotte and everyone else was going through. I'm sorry, it just wasn't there for me but I know that this story will hit differently for other people who read it.
I received an ARC of Hello Wife and this is my honest opinion.
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About the author
Lisa Kaplan Friedman is an award winning writer of essays, articles, novels and stories. Her humor essays appear in the New York Times, Huffington Post, and in magazines and online venues. A contributing editor in Health and Medicine, Lisa writes widely about dementia and other brain diseases - something she knows entirely too much about.
Lisa writes about art and culture for the Smithsonian Institution's Associates Magazine. She teaches, mentors and tutors student writers, and is a frequent guest lecturer around the country. Awarded the prize for Best in Humor from the Erma Bombeck Center, Lisa also received First Prize for Writing at the DCJCC Literary Festival, and was nominated for Best Essayist by the American Society of Journalists and Authors. She received her BA from the George Washington University, and her Masters of Writing from the Johns Hopkins University. ~ Amazon
Connect with Lisa
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