An intriguing story about Daphne who unexpectantly runs into her mother’s second husband, Eddie at a museum. He had only been married a year but had left a lasting impact on nine-year-old Daphne who believed the break up was her fault. The last time she’d seen him was when they were in a car accident and she had  trudged through snow to save him.

This is a beautifully told story about love and loss and how two people can have a profound impact on each other. Both Daphne and Eddie are propelled back to their once loving relationship almost immediately their bond barely broken

Daphne relays the story of the accident to her sister in snippets. Yet her sister being younger, didn’t have quite the same relationship and at times disappears in the story while Daphne and Eddie reignite their love for one another.

The characters are endearing and thoughtful even Jonathan, Daphne’s husband. Daphne herself is complicated as she is likeable. The story told through her eyes, reveals her pain and loss as well as her heartfelt relationships.

This is a lovely gentle story. Check it out.

You would think the story line of a wife who comes home and finds her husband has been unfaithful to be of little interest to anyone.

Except this memoir is a highly compelling and voyeuristic look inside a world of privilege and the disintegration of a relationship.

I was captured hook, line, sinker with this one. The writing is truly beautiful and the author engages the reader about her life, the tragedy, and the fallout affecting her friends, family and neighbours. It shines a light on the societal norms of the nuclear family and the class structure she experiences in her Martha Vineyard home all while with Covid lurks in the sidelines.

The author is no celebrity but she does have wealth which was taken advantage of by her philandering husband who kept his obscene hedge fund salary a secret. To be fair, she admitted she had no interest in their finances trusting him completely. And many relationships do that and it’s all fine until it isn’t. Every person should understand their financial situation and it’s got nothing to do with trust. If he’d died suddenly, she would have had to face it anyway—lesson learned.

I was captivated with this story, how the husband managed a double life and it played on my mind as to how these men actually think. We get no more of an explanation of this betrayal than Burden did. But the signs were there. He leaves the parenting to her, wants the prenup changed, convinces her that his long hours at work is for the family, agrees that her trust fund should be used to buy property in joint names without contribution from him. Is it hindsight or her ignorance about what their relationship truly looked like?

The disintegration of one woman’s life and how she picked up the pieces was engaging enough. Check this one out.

Whoa this book has really done my head in and I’ve needed time to digest and process what just happened.

Natalie is an influencer raising her large family on a farm and posting about her daily life with her handsome cowboy husband and her perfectly styled kitchen and well-behaved children. It seems she has it all and her followers lap it up despite the fact Natalie has lots of paid help.

However, she wakes one morning cast back into the 1800’s with her same family, same farm house and same husband. But something isn’t quite right.

The story is told in two timelines: her life in the present as a traditional wife and her backstory. The other tells how she navigates her life back in history. From the first page I was hooked because all I wanted to know was how she had time travelled back to the 1800’s.

I loved the two-time line structure and her backstory. The writing was very good too. However, her life in the 1800’s was quite brutal and confronting. Was she held a prisoner, had she time travelled or was she merely suffering some sort of nightmare dream? I won’t put any spoilers in here but there were quite a few holes when I looked back on that second timeline e.g she suffers an injury but no help is called. I couldn’t buy into the callousness of that.

Nevertheless, it’s a wild ride and I can see why it’s captured many readers. I did come away feeling very little for Natalie’s character. Her husband even more so. She really was the angry woman and the question is why she put up with it all for so long. I did wonder though if she was an unreliable narrator and when you consider that, the whole thing is barely believable. If anything it’s quite a sad story.

This would be a great book club pick because it would no doubt ignite a lot of debate. Check it out if you haven’t already.