February 2026 Book Club Pick: My Husband's Wife by Alice Feeney
A new month means it’s time for a new virtual book club pick!
Okay, so… I can’t believe I forgot to post about January’s book, but man… newborns have a way of laying claim to all your energy haha. Almost three months in, it’s been hard to balance everything I want to do with everything I need to do, but I’m getting better at the whole multitasking mom thing (like now, I’m writing this post and holding a napping baby) and accepting that I can’t put too much pressure on myself in this phase of life. It’s been a long and slow couple months on the reading front, but good news — in January, I got back to reading more consistently and managed to finish three books, including our January 2026 book club pick Dungeon Crawler Carly by Matt Dinniman.
Dungeon Crawler Carly by Matt Dinniman is not my normal genre whatsoever, but in October last year, my friend and I were at a local bookstore in Southern Pines, NC and there was a guy raving and raving about this series. He was talking about how fun and different it was, and added there was a talking cat, which (as two cat people) kind of hooked us onto the idea of giving it a try. One thing about book club is we’re always going to go for something new and mix up our genres, and so it goes, that’s exactly what we decided to do to kick off the 2026 reading season. All-in-all, I did enjoy my reading experience, as did a couple others, but I wouldn’t say I found my new favorite book series or anything. In fact, Dungeon Crawler Carl ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but I wasn’t immediately compelled to start the next book in the series. That seemed to be the general consensus except for my friend’s boyfriend who is well into book six already!
Chatting with the ladies last Thursday who listened to the audiobook (I read on my Kindle), they both said the narration was fantastic and probably helped bump up their own personal rating. For me, I stayed entertained throughout, but probably would have liked it more as an audiobook, hence my three star rating on Goodreads. We did have a couple DNF’s, but that’s going to happen sometimes, especially with books like Dungeon Crawler Carl. Being an apocalyptic LITRPG-style book, it was a unique read that read, in the words of one of our book clubbers, super “dude bro”, coded in (sometimes crude) millennial humor to be expected given the main character is… just a dude with no pants wandering around a death dungeon. Good book to engage discussion though!
Before we hop to February’s book of the month, here’s a recap of all the books we book clubbed about in 2025:
January: Mrs. Nash’s Ashes by Sarah Adler
February: The Favorites by Layne Fargo
September: Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson
December: Lovelight Farms by B.K. Borison
And now for February!
The February 2026 Just Jen Things virtual book club pick is My Husband’s Wife by Alice Feeney. After reading something so different for January, we’re regressing to the mean for February and going with Feeney’s twisty new thriller. I’m super excited about this pick because I just finished reading it — and I was HOOKED. In fact, I read it in less than 24 hours, and that’s not something I’m typically able to do. I found myself wanting to open the book and read all the time, even during my baby’s feedings at 4am. Having read two underwhelming books by Feeney in the past couple years — Daisy Darker (2 stars) and Beautiful Ugly (3 stars) — I was apprehensive to pick up My Husband’s Wife, but I kept seeing people label it as “her best book yet”, so I thought I’d give her writing another try, which I’m glad I did. While I don’t usually read the book club books before the month we read them, I made an exception this month because I really want the squad to discuss the twists and turns in this one. And because I was hyping it up on my Instagram stories, everyone was interested in it. I’m either setting us up for the book of the year (so far) or waiting for everyone else to say they hated it. Stay tuned…
Here’s the synopsis from Goodreads:
The New York Times bestselling Queen of Twists is back with a psychological masterpiece that will leave you questioning everything you know about love, identity, and revenge.
Eden Fox, an artist on the brink of her big break, sets off for a run before her first exhibition. When she returns to the home she recently moved into, Spyglass, an enchanting old house in Hope Falls, nothing is as it should be. Her key doesn’t fit. A woman, eerily similar to her, answers the door. And her husband insists that the stranger is his wife.
One house. One husband. Two women. Someone is lying.
Six months earlier, a reclusive Londoner called Birdy, reeling from a life-changing diagnosis, inherits Spyglass. This unexpected gift from a long-lost grandmother brings her to the pretty seaside village of Hope Falls. But then Birdy stumbles upon a shadowy London clinic that claims to be able to predict a person's date of death, including her own. Secrets start to unravel, and as the line between truth and lies blurs, Birdy feels compelled to right some old wrongs.
My Husband’s Wife is a tangled web of deception, obsession, and mystery that will keep you guessing until the last page. Prepare yourself for the ultimate mind-bending marriage thriller and step inside Spyglass – if you dare – to experience a story where nothing is as it seems.
If you’re interested in joining the February discussion, let me know! We’d love to have you!
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Enjoy!
JBW