The Wife App

April 15, 2023
Three divorced mothers in Manhattan join forces to create an app "to right marital inequalities" in this breezy look at gender imbalance. Independently wealthy business school dropout Madeline Wallace, who has been happily divorced since her ex-husband transferred to London shortly after their daughter was born 14 years ago, borders on obsessive in how much she loves single motherhood. Lauren Zuckerman loves her 12-year-old twin daughters, too, but having recently gotten divorced after learning her ex-husband was having sex with prostitutes, she now regrets that she gave up a high-powered tech career to freelance and carry more of the parenting load. Literacy teacher Sophie Smart, who doesn't talk much about her bisexuality, struggles to support her sons, 12 and 7, with minimal help from her ex-husband, who has married and had a baby with a successful lawyer Sophie can't help both envying and liking. During a dinner celebrating Lauren's divorce, Madeline half-seriously suggests that Lauren should develop an app to help women monetize the chores and, more importantly, the "mental load" of being a wife. Lauren takes Madeline's idea and runs with it. The viewpoints shift among the three as the app develops, grows, and suddenly catches fire. Lauren handles the tech, Madeline the finance, and Sophie client relations. What starts as a socially conscious novel about the plight of women becomes an increasingly lightweight romp. Although "mental load" remains the main reference point throughout the book, the emphasis shifts to romance (plus sex) and relatively minor, ultimately solvable child-rearing crises, what Madeline acknowledges are "first-world problems." There is surprisingly little social texture; these likable-enough women live in a world without racial tension or political anxiety. Although Mackler's protagonists are around 40 and would have been barely 20 at the turn of the 21st century, they could easily populate an updated Sex and the City. Mackler knows how to shape scenes and characters but offers an oddly dated, privileged version of feminism lite.

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April 24, 2023
In Mackler’s upbeat adult debut (after the middle grade novel Not if I Can Help It), three best friends monetize the domestic work done by wives and mothers. Lauren Zuckerman files for divorce after she finds out her husband, Eric, is visiting sex workers, while her divorced friend, Sophie Smart, has long moved on from her deadbeat ex, Joshua. Both men have landed on their feet—Eric is now dating the babysitter, and Joshua’s new wife is documenting their lives with glossy Instagram posts. Lauren and Sophie, meanwhile, struggle to make ends meet and still perform the lion’s share of parenting, and their friend Madeline Wallace, who is independently wealthy, contends with her ex’s attempt to gain custody of their children. Fed up, the women create an app to “right marital inequalities” that will allow users to pay for services that often fall to mothers. As the app picks up steam, the women fend off their meddling exes and seek to define themselves as independent women. While the writing is at times didactic (“what if marriage actually started this way, with frank conversations about division of labor,” Madeline wonders), Mackler identifies many real, often unspoken problems inherent in domesticity. This is worth a look. Agent: Jodi Reamer, Writers House.

May 1, 2023
Many readers will recognize the many ways Lauren, Sophie, and Madeline were unappreciated in their marriages. Determined to demonstrate the value of those tasks everyone assumes that wives will just manage (and maybe get revenge on their ex-husbands in the process), they launch the Wife App, putting a price on everything from scheduling doctor appointments to planning vacations and completing school applications. Like a dating app, it matches "spouses" with wives who will, for a fee, take care of anyone's mental load. It seems everyone needs a wife, and the app soon becomes wildly popular, leading each woman to begin to see her own value. Unfortunately, Mackler's first adult novel doesn't charm the way her beloved YA books have, with awkward sex scenes that don't quite fit and unrealistic characters and situations more reminiscent of moneyed New York than middle-class women trying to juggle it all. Still, the character development of each of the protagonists, the nod to breaking down gender norms, and a satisfying ending all point to potential for Mackler among the beach-read set.

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