I always say I wanna move to a quaint little town but may one like this NEVER find me. The first third was slow and definitely felt a bit dated with an MC I didn't particularly care for, but the last third was so unputdownable that I can easily see how the term Stepford Wife entered the cultural vernacular. Even beyond the social commentary that is exactly emblemic of what we now consider second wave feminism, for me the triumph of this book was the absolutely insane climax that had so much adrenaline flowing through my system that I was left physically nauseous from it. Certainly props to the audiobook narrator as well for how well uncanniness and paranoia and "hysteria" came across. Afterword was a bit strange (to put it nicely), with Peter Straub seemingly taking shots at the ignorance of readers and their inability to appreciate book construction, yet mistaking details from the book himself??