My wife started our island and it seems that she can only progress the "main" story. If I talk to Tom Nook and as "What should I do?", I always get a response that says "Talk to {name}, she's the town appointed leader". Kind of annoying, but ok.

Yesterday, however, she received all of the DIY recipes for the new neighbor's furniture, and I did not. They aren't for sale, Tom won't give them to me, I have no idea how to get them. Does anyone know if they will be available later? Maybe available to purchase? Losing out on specific items in the game just because we share an island is pretty frustrating.

I have the same issue.. I'm stuck building all the houses for Nook and my wife didn't get any DIY recipes nor can she help talk to them. Whoever thought this was a good idea has serious mental issues. Totally breaks the game.

Once the Nooklings open their own shop they sell all of the flimsy tools’ DIY recipes, as well as the flimsy tools themselves, in the cupboard in the back of the shop

It was like that in AC:NL with the mayor too. You can have multiple players but everyone but the first is getting a much worse experience.

It's not surprising considering what they've done in the past but it's kind of disappointing. I get that it's a hard game to have multiple players in but it seems like they're intentionally making it hard. The 1 town per console limit also makes things hard but I get why they do it so you can't have a ton of towns and get more iron nuggets and free Nook Miles per day.

This is something that's understandable on a handheld game like New Leaf, but making it so that only one person can have access to the full game just doesn't work on a home console.