Jenna Bush Hager’s latest Today show book club pick is Happy Wife by Meredith Lavender and Kendall Shores.
Lavender and Shores’ novel, published Tuesday by Bantam, follows Nora Davies, a 28-year-old woman working as a swimming teacher at a country club in Winter Park, Florida. She falls in love with and marries Will Somerset, a divorced 46-year-old lawyer, and he goes missing the morning after his birthday party, leaving her the main suspect in his disappearance.
Hager revealed the novel’s selection on the Today show, saying, “It’s the first time we’ve ever [chosen] a two-author book, which I love.…It’s one of those fun summer reads that you open and then, all of a sudden, it’s over.…It’s twisty. It’s a mystery. It’s an exploration of friendship, marriage, wealth, and the secrets that lurk behind closed doors.”
Shores told Today.com that the novel was loosely inspired by the 2021 murders of Maggie and Paul Murdaugh in South Carolina. Alex Murdaugh, Maggie’s husband and Paul’s father, was convicted of the killings in 2023.
“You could see the way that, in a small town in South Carolina, the way that lore and history and lineage in that community shapes a crime,” Shores said. “For me, growing up in Winter Park, which has its own lore and its own kind of energy, I just couldn’t stop picturing what…it would be like if that happened in Winter Park.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
