After her husband cheats on her, a woman attempts her own affair to settle the score.
Hannah thinks she and her husband, Joel, have a happy marriage. That is, until she snoops on his phone to find out if he’s planning a surprise birthday party for her and discovers the unthinkable—he's cheated on her. Joel swears it was a one-time thing and urges Hannah into couples counseling, but Hannah can’t put it behind her. So she proposes a radical solution: She’ll have an affair of her own, just to make things even. Joel, desperate to convince Hannah that he’s sorry, agrees to her preposterous plan. Hannah’s problem? She doesn’t really want to have an affair, but her anger and unquenchable desire for revenge push her to sign up for dating apps and suffer through some abysmal first dates. Hannah’s frustration also stems from the fact that she’s the de facto contact person for Joel’s father, who’s in a nursing home. When Hannah learns that Joel’s parents went through relationship difficulties but remained married, she starts to think that perhaps she should give Joel another chance. Hannah’s best friend, who’s going through her own miserable divorce, encourages Hannah to work things out with Joel. Hannah isn’t sure what to do—despite all her bad dates, she does feel some chemistry with Reuben, the kind, charming social worker at her father-in-law’s nursing home. But eventually, Hannah has to do what’s best for her family—and, most importantly, for her. It’s difficult to invoke sympathy for a man who cheats on his wife and a woman attempting to cheat on her husband, but LaBan (Not Perfect, 2018, etc.) pulls it off. Given the situation, Hannah’s rage makes complete sense, and LaBan provides enough details about Hannah and Joel’s past to help readers see why Hannah would struggle with the idea of leaving him. Refreshingly, LaBan resists making any of her characters into stereotypical villains, instead painting them as complex, flawed human beings.
A moving look at the heartbreaks and high points of a long relationship.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5420-9372-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 27, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2019
Categories: LITERARY FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
Did you like this book?
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy (The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend—the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore. Susan (a shrink with a lot of time on her hands) says to Tom, "Will you stay in New York and tell me all you know?" and he does, for nearly 600 mostly-bloated pages of flashbacks depicting The Family Wingo of swampy Colleton County: a beautiful mother, a brutal shrimper father (the Great Santini alive and kicking), and Tom and Savannah's much-admired older brother, Luke. There are enough traumas here to fall an average-sized mental ward, but the biggie centers around Luke, who uses the skills learned as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam to fight a guerrilla war against the installation of a nuclear power plant in Colleton and is killed by the authorities. It's his death that precipitates the nervous breakdown that costs Tom his job, and Savannah, almost, her life. There may be a barely-glimpsed smaller novel buried in all this succotash (Tom's marriage and life as a football coach), but it's sadly overwhelmed by the book's clumsy central narrative device (flashback ad infinitum) and Conroy's pretentious prose style: ""There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory. I speak now of the sun-struck, deeply lived-in days of my past.
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1986
ISBN: 0553381547
Page Count: 686
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986
Categories: LITERARY FICTION
Did you like this book?
SEEN & HEARD
Hoover is one of the freshest voices in new-adult fiction, and her latest resonates with true emotion, unforgettable...
14
GET IT
Sydney and Ridge make beautiful music together in a love triangle written by Hoover (Losing Hope, 2013, etc.), with a link to a digital soundtrack by American Idol contestant Griffin Peterson.
Hoover is a master at writing scenes from dual perspectives. While music student Sydney is watching her neighbor Ridge play guitar on his balcony across the courtyard, Ridge is watching Sydney’s boyfriend, Hunter, secretly make out with her best friend on her balcony. The two begin a songwriting partnership that grows into something more once Sydney dumps Hunter and decides to crash with Ridge and his two roommates while she gets back on her feet. She finds out after the fact that Ridge already has a long-distance girlfriend, Maggie—and that he's deaf. Ridge’s deafness doesn’t impede their relationship or their music. In fact, it creates opportunities for sexy nonverbal communication and witty text messages: Ridge tenderly washes off a message he wrote on Sydney’s hand in ink, and when Sydney adds a few too many e’s to the word “squee” in her text, Ridge replies, “If those letters really make up a sound, I am so, so glad I can’t hear it.” While they fight their mutual attraction, their hope that “maybe someday” they can be together playfully comes out in their music. Peterson’s eight original songs flesh out Sydney’s lyrics with a good mix of moody musical styles: “Living a Lie” has the drama of a Coldplay piano ballad, while the chorus of “Maybe Someday” marches to the rhythm of the Lumineers. But Ridge’s lingering feelings for Maggie cause heartache for all three of them. Independent Maggie never complains about Ridge’s friendship with Sydney, and it's hard to even want Ridge to leave Maggie when she reveals her devastating secret. But Ridge can’t hide his feelings for Sydney long—and they face their dilemma with refreshing emotional honesty.
Hoover is one of the freshest voices in new-adult fiction, and her latest resonates with true emotion, unforgettable characters and just the right amount of sexual tension.Pub Date: March 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-5316-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2014
Categories: ROMANCE | CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
Did you like this book?
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
