Publication: 5th June 2025 (paperback) – Bloomsbury Books
No one knows better than Ian Palmer – Executive Butler – that social position is everything in the rose-strewn Cotswolds.
So when his boss, Tata Hawkins, flounces out of her (new-build) manor house after a row with husband Bryan, Ian is alarmed: for one thing, if Tata is on the social slide downwards, that means he is too; for another, he’s lost his home and has nowhere to store his prized collection of vintage Gucci loafers; even worse, a vacuum among the Country Princess set has opened up for a new Queen Bee.
With the old-money Pennybacker-Hoare sisters plotting to rid ‘their’ county of Tata and her ilk, a bikini influencer on the prowl for a husband just like Mr. Hawkins, a glamorous American divorcee threatening to steal Tata’s crown, and the heiress-next-door threatening to steal Ian, the Cotswolds are in chaos.
Can Ian restore Tata’s country crown and reinstate her to the comforts of the Manor?
I have always enjoyed Plum Sykes’s novels for their comedy and witticism and Wives Like Us is another fun and refreshing read. The story is set in Oxfordshire among the richest and the wealthiest whose ordinary life of lunches, parties, and gossiping is disrupted by the arrival of a dazzling American divorcée everyone wants to befriend.
A cast of eclectic characters kept me quite entertained as they navigate family drama, secrets, new friendships, and new loves. At the center of it all, making sure that everything goes according to plan, there is Ian Palmer, Executive Butler, graduated summa cum laude from the Greycoats’ Butler Institute in Mayfair. Every woman and man in Oxfordshire wished that Ian was theirs. Efficient, smart, loyal, always ready for any difficulty, and with a huge collection of loafers, Ian is a driver, a concierge, a fixer, and a friend to Tara Hawkins, queen of The Bottoms. So, when Tara moves them to the family estate’s huge coach house after a disagreement with her husband, Ian is not worried. When a young influencer moves into the family home with Tara’s husband, he has a spy already on the spot. When Tara manages to befriend the new arrival in the village, he is ready to organize the best dinner ever, because he knows what is required of him.
Wives Like Us is a witty and sharp read with a terrific protagonist in Ian Palmer, butler extraordinaire, and lots of hilarious and enjoyable scenes that kept me quite entertained from the first to the last page!
A huge thank you to Bloomsbury and NetGalley for providing me with a proof of this delightful novel.
Plum Sykes was born in London in 1969, the daughter of a fashion designer and an art dealer. She was educated at Oxford, where she studied Modern History. She started her career as an intern at British Vogue in London, and in 1997 was offered a job as a fashion writer by Anna Wintour, the Editor-In-Chief at American Vogue. She moved to New York to take up the position, and covered fashion and society for the magazine. In 2003 she started writing her first comic novel, Bergdorf Blondes, which was published in 2004 and stayed on the New York Times Bestseller List for 16 weeks, and became a Best Seller in the UK and in many countries around the world. She published her second novel, The Debutante Divorcee, in 2006. Her third novel, Party Girls Die in Pearls was published in 2016. She has written various teleplays and screenplays, and continues to work for American Vogue as a Contributing Editor. Plum now lives in England with her husband and two children, Ursula and Tess. Her fourth novel, Wives Like Us, a comic satire of glamorous wives in the English countryside, is published on May 14 2024.
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