The Hunting Wives is one of those shows where the drama never stops. You get murder, secret affairs, lies, and small-town gossip, all packed into 8 episodes. The characters make wild, bad choices that will have you yelling at your screen, but that's exactly what makes it so much fun to watch. It's not trying to be deep or serious, it's just messy, addictive, and the perfect guilty pleasure to binge.
The Story
The show follows Sophie O'Neil, a woman from Massachusetts who moves to a small Texas town called Maple Brook with her husband Graham and their young son. Sophie has a dark secret - she killed someone in a drunk driving accident back in Cambridge, which is why they moved to Texas for a fresh start. Her husband Graham is super controlling about her drinking and driving because of this past tragedy.
When they arrive in Texas, Sophie meets Margo Banks, the queen bee of a group of wealthy housewives called "The Hunting Wives." Margo is married to Jed Banks, a rich oil man who's running for governor and happens to be Graham's boss. The other wives include Callie (married to the sheriff), and Jill (married to a mega-church pastor and mother to teenage son Brad).
Sophie feels trapped in her new life and is drawn to Margo's wild, free lifestyle. The Hunting Wives drink, party, and do whatever they want. Margo introduces Sophie to this world of freedom she's been missing. But there's a big problem - Margo is secretly having an affair with Brad, who is Jill's 18 year old son and a high school student. This relationship is super inappropriate since Margo is in her 40s and Brad is barely an adult.
Things get complicated when Brad starts dating Abby, a teenage girl whose mother Starr works as a cleaner and isn't part of the wealthy social circle. Brad is torn between his girlfriend Abby and his secret affair with Margo. Meanwhile, Sophie starts having romantic feelings for Margo too, and they end up having an affair.
The mystery starts when Abby is found dead in the woods. At first, everyone thinks Brad might have killed her because they had been fighting. But then the police find Sophie's gun at the crime scene, making her the main suspect. Sophie had bought the gun earlier because Margo convinced her she needed protection.
Throughout the investigation, we see lots of suspicious behavior. Jill (Brad's mom) starts acting really weird - deleting her phone records, cleaning her car obsessively, and lying to the police. Pastor Pete, a young pastor at their church, turns out to be drugging and kidnapping teenage girls. There's also a mysterious one-eyed man who keeps warning Sophie that Margo and her husband are dangerous people.
Sophie becomes obsessed with proving her innocence and figuring out who really killed Abby. She keeps making terrible decisions, like continuing to trust Margo even after realizing Margo might have framed her. Sophie's husband Graham tries to help but becomes increasingly frustrated with her lies and reckless behavior.
In a shocking twist during the investigation, we discover that Starr (Abby's mom) had been blackmailing Margo. Starr found out about Margo's affair with Brad and also discovered that Margo had gotten pregnant from the affair and secretly had an abortion. Starr was demanding money to keep quiet about these secrets.
When Starr confronts Jill about her son's affair with Margo, Jill loses it completely. She shoots and kills Starr to protect her family's reputation and her husband's church career. This murder happens right in front of Sophie, who witnesses the whole thing.
But here's the biggest twist - in the final episodes, Sophie figures out that Margo is actually the one who killed Abby. It turns out that Abby had found out about Margo's abortion and was going to expose everything. Margo followed Abby into the woods that night and shot her with Sophie's gun, which she had stolen earlier. Margo then framed Sophie by making sure the gun would be found at the crime scene.
The ending is absolutely crazy and shows just how far Sophie has fallen. After discovering that Margo is the real killer, Sophie confronts her. But instead of going to the police like a normal person would do, Sophie makes the worst possible decision. She gets drunk again and drives to confront Kyle, who is Margo's brother. In a moment of rage and drunkenness, Sophie runs over Kyle with her car, killing him instantly - just like she had killed that pedestrian back in Cambridge years ago.
The show ends with Sophie realizing she's become just as bad as everyone else. She's committed her second vehicular homicide, and there's no going back. Meanwhile, Margo's life is also destroyed because her husband Jed kicks her out after learning about her affairs and lies.
How This Compares to the Book
The Netflix series keeps the main part of May Cobb's Novel - Sophie moves to Texas, gets swept up in Margo's glamorous but reckless friend group, has an affair, and becomes part of a murder investigation. But there are big changes. In the book, Brad is underage, which makes his relationship with Margo much more disturbing; in the show, he's 18, which is still inappropriate but not illegal. The killer is also different, in the novel, Jill kills Abby to protect her son, while in the show, Margo is the one who kills Abby and frames Sophie. The pregnancy storyline is flipped too: in the book, Abby is hinted to be pregnant with Brad's baby, but in the show, it's Margo who is pregnant and secretly has an abortion.
The show also feels faster and more dramatic. Some characters are bigger and more over-the-top than in the book, and a few storylines are cut or changed. The series adds new parts, like Margo's husband running for governor and more focus on abortion politics in Texas. Sophie's ending is also very different. In the book, she chooses to step away from the drama, stay with her family, and focus on rebuilding her life. In the show, she loses control, gets drunk, and runs over Margo's brother with her car, killing him and destroying any chance of starting fresh. The book wraps things up with more closure, but the show ends in chaos, leaving room for a second season.
My Review
Let me be honest - this show is absolutely ridiculous, but that's exactly what makes it so entertaining! It's like someone took every possible soap opera drama and crammed it all into eight episodes. You have affairs, murder, blackmail, corrupt politicians, creepy pastors, and enough bad decisions to fill ten seasons of other shows.
The best thing about The Hunting Wives is that it doesn't pretend to be anything other than trashy entertainment. It's like reading a really juicy gossip magazine or watching one of those Lifetime movies that are so over-the-top, that they become funny. Every character is either completely terrible or makes such stupid choices that you want to yell at your TV screen.
Sophie is probably one of the most frustrating main characters I've ever watched. She makes terrible decision after terrible decision, and you keep hoping she'll finally wise up, but she never does. Even when she figures out that Margo is the killer, instead of going to the police, she decides to commit another murder! It's like watching someone walk into traffic while looking at their phone, you can literally see the disaster coming from miles away.
Margo is fascinating to watch because she's completely evil but also kind of brilliant in her manipulation. She knows exactly how to control people and get them to do what she wants. The actress playing her does a great job making you both hate Margo and be impressed by how clever she is.
The show also does a good job showing how addiction works. Sophie is clearly an alcoholic who uses drinking to deal with her problems, and every time she drinks, she makes worse and worse choices. The show demonstrates how addiction can destroy not just your own life but the lives of everyone around you.
One thing that made me uncomfortable was the relationship between Margo and Brad. Even though the show says he's 18, he's still in high school and she's old enough to be his mother. It feels creepy and wrong, especially since Margo is supposed to be friends with his actual mother. The show treats this like it's just scandalous fun, but it's actually pretty disturbing.
The mystery part of the show is actually pretty well done. I genuinely didn't know who the killer was until the end, even though looking back, there were clues throughout the whole series. The show does a good job of making lots of different characters look suspicious at different times.
The setting in small-town Texas is used really well to show how everyone knows everyone else's business, but also how much people will do to protect their reputations. All the characters are so worried about what other people think, that they're willing to lie, cheat, and even kill to keep their secrets hidden.
What I found most interesting is how the show explores the idea that there are no real good guys or bad guys - everyone is somewhere in the middle. Even Sophie, who we're supposed to root for, ends up being just as bad as everyone else by the end. It makes you think about how ordinary people can become capable of terrible things when they're pushed to their limits.
The production is really good for what this show is trying to be. The acting is solid (even if some of the Texas accents are pretty fake), and the show looks expensive and polished. It doesn't feel cheap or rushed.
If you're looking for a serious, deep drama that will make you think about important life issues, this definitely isn't it. But if you want something that's pure entertainment - something you can watch while eating popcorn and gasping at all the crazy plot twists then The Hunting Wives is perfect.
It's the kind of show that's fun to watch with friends so you can all complain about how stupid the characters are and try to guess what ridiculous thing will happen next. It's definitely not high art, but sometimes you just want to watch beautiful people make terrible choices in expensive clothes, and this show delivers exactly that.
The ending sets up a possible second season, but honestly, I'm not sure where they could go from here since pretty much everyone's life is completely destroyed. Still, if they do make more episodes, I'll probably watch them because this show is like potato chips, it's not good for you, but once you start, it's really hard to stop.
Watch on Netflix