Okay, sit down. Put your phone away — actually no, keep it, you might need to screenshot this — because I need to tell you about Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden and I need you to understand that this woman has written a book that made me feel things I am not entirely comfortable with. Things like: satisfaction. Gleeful, guilty, thoroughly unhinged satisfaction. And I don't regret a single page.
Debbie Mullen runs the advice column "Dear Debbie" for a New England newspaper, where local wives seek sympathy and neighbourly guidance. Through her work, Debbie has heard from countless women who are ignored, belittled, or abused by their husbands, and she does her best to guide them in the right direction. On paper, she is your friendly neighbourhood advice aunt, Warm, sensible, trustworthy. But here is what the book reveals almost immediately — Debbie's public voice is reassuring and practical, while her private thoughts drift toward extreme solutions and those unpublished drafts she writes but never sends? They are violent, specific, detailed and absolutely hilarious in the darkest way imaginable. Throughout the novel we see unpublished drafts of sarcastic and sometimes violent responses Debbie gives to people who reached out to her for advice. I read one and immediately texted three people about it.
Now, Debbie's life looks lovely from the outside. Garden magazine shoot, nice house, two daughters, husband named Cooper. But the cracks appear fast. Cooper's boss Ken Bryant rejects his request for a promotion. When Cooper threatens to quit, Ken accepts his resignation. Cooper loses his job and doesn't tell Debbie. Debbie also loses her job at the newspaper when a letter writer takes her advice and leaves her abusive husband, who then threatens to sue and so both of them are sitting at the dinner table lying straight to each other's faces about having perfectly fine days. That scene alone says everything about the quiet rot inside a marriage nobody has bothered to actually look at.
Then there's Harley, the personal trainer. The supposed friend. Harley believes that Debbie, while a kind and goodhearted person, is also a frigid and absentee wife, which is why Harley has no qualms about having an affair with Cooper. She befriended Debbie specifically to gather information on him. She is sleeping with the husband and attending the wife's book club meetings. The sheer nerve of this woman nd the book club itself? Debbie and Harley arrive at the snobbish book club hosted by Rochelle. Debbie brings turkey and avocado sandwiches, knowingly including Harley's allergen. As the wealthy women mock her, Rochelle, Tabitha, and Sloane eat the sandwiches and become violently ill. Did Debbie do that on purpose? The book lets you sit in delicious uncertainty and I loved every second of not knowing.
Then her daughters start having problems. Coach Pike cuts Izzy from the soccer team due to her weight. Lexi enters an unhealthy relationship with a boy named Zane. When Lexi breaks up with Zane, he threatens to share intimate photos of her with their school. Zane's sexual exploitation of Lexi triggers memories of Debbie's own experience being raped by a man named Hutch in college. She vows revenge and arranges to meet Zane in an abandoned park, where she drugs him and destroys the photos of Lexi. The following morning, a panicked Zane crashes his car into the high school and is hospitalised with a broken neck. I put the book down, and I said "Debbie" out loud to nobody. This woman is not playing.
But the twist. Oh my, the twist is something else entirely. Harley arranges to ambush Debbie and Cooper by inviting them to dinner at the same time. Her plan is foiled when it is revealed that the man Harley knows as Cooper is actually Jesse Hutchinson — Cooper's coworker and gym buddy. Debbie had discovered this fact when she found his shirt at Harley's apartment. She recognised Jesse's smell because he is Hutch — the man who raped her in college. He has been living freely, pretending to be someone else, sleeping with a woman who befriended his victim's wife. In college, Jesse had raped a girl named Misty and killed her when he realised she would not stay quiet, and he got away with it. The rage I felt reading that sentence was so intense and physical.
Desperate for revenge, Debbie stole Jesse's gun and used it to kill Ken Bryant and frame him for the murder. She then drugs Jesse, shoots Harley, and stages a death by suicide scene for Jesse. Everyone believed the story Debbie set up — that Jesse stole from the company and killed Ken and Harley. Jesse went to jail for two counts of first degree murder.
And the epilogue? Cooper runs his own accounting firm. Lexi gets into Harvard. Debbie sells her new app, "Punish Your Husband," for a lot of money. She won yes she won everything. And I cheered for a woman who did genuinely terrible things — because Freida McFadden made me understand every single step that brought her there. That is the real trick of this book. It doesn't ask you to approve of Debbie. It just makes you feel exactly what Debbie felt, until you understand why she did what she did and nd that is terrifying and brilliant.
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