Jo's Secrets: A Romantic Wife Sharing Novel

by Arnica Butler

Jo never talked much about her past, so Nate is naturally curious about her secrets when they move back to her hometown to save the family business. It isn’t long before he realizes that Jo may be the woman he married, but before she was Jo, she was T.J. And T.J. was... well, someone else. Now Jo is surrounded by ex-lovers, and potential younger lovers, and Nate’s imagination is running wild. He’s supposed to be writing the Next Great American Novel, and instead he’s penning filthy stories with his wife in mind as the main character. But when life starts to imitate art, and art starts to imitate life, Nate becomes unsure of how much of his fantasy is fiction, and whether his marriage to Jo was ever what he thought it was... and whether it can ever be the same again.

144 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 6, 2019

Reviews

[WWUK · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jo and her husband Nate, return to her southern hometown so she can try and save the family's stud farm. Nate is a writer suffering from writers block.

Nate starts to glean from bits of conversation he hears from the locals and by the way Jo tries to keep him from mixing, that his wife was very different when she was younger. For one thing he didn't have her down as a homecoming queen, the girl all the guys dreamed about.

Unable to write as he normally does, Nate turns to writing hotwife/cuckolding stories and even starts to get them published.

The main plot revolves around these stories and his wife's possible slutty passed. He starts to get confused between reality and the fiction, questioning what he has heard or seen.

A clever idea but it didn't quite work for me. That is not to say that others might love it, this author certainly produces high quality material in this genre.

[Jay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm usually completely pleased by anything Arnica Butler writes. The stories are always fun, hot, well edited, and well told. I think this excellent writer tried to get a bit too fancy this time. This is a story about a wife having an affair and her author husband writing erotica based on his fears and the events. It just didn't work for me. The story of the wife playing and the husband discovering her secrets could have been so much better if AB didn't spend so much time sharing what the husband wrote. I would have far preferred to see what he was experiencing via narration or dialog.

Maybe it is just me, though. The book is certainly well edited and the scenes are smoking hot as usual from AB. The interruptions from the protagonist's writing just broke up the flow for me.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I usually love Arnica’s books, but this one didn’t do it for me. I like good character development and a building relationship between the couple. That didn’t happen for me in this book.

I see this book as more cheating than hotwifing. It isn’t until near the very end that the couple talk at all, and we’re left with little idea of the motivation for the wife Jo. As the story progresses, the husband Nate begins to figure out, and hear about, what Jo (or TJ as she was previously known) was like growing up in the backwoods of Georgia.

For some reason, Jo reverts to that persona as time on the farm in Georgia progresses. I wish we had a better idea about why she left the persona in the first place, and then why she reverted to it. For me, her talking about it with her husband would have been really insightful.

There was also an excellent opportunity for Nate to have some fun. That didn’t seem to cross Nate’s mind. There was no explanation for that missed opportunity either.

For me, the sex was ok. Nothing innovative, and we never hear from the young stud Jo begins to play with.

I thought the premise for the book was interesting. For me it didn’t work. However, I look forward to Arnica’s next book.

[Peter Cornell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not so much.