The Man I Fell In Love With by Kate FieldMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Mary Black's comfortable life is blown apart when she sees her husband (and childhood sweetheart) holding hands with another man at a Christmas Party. Suddenly her marriage to the boy next door is a sham and she finds herself not only the subject of small town gossip but separated from a man who was her best friend as well as her husband.
Juggling her 'marvellous' mother-in-law, who still lives next door, her mother, who lives in a converted garage attached to Mary's house, two teenage children, her soon-to-be ex-husband Leo, his brother Ethan, and his lover Clark, the dog Dotty, her BFF Daisy and the promotion for Leo's book on the little known Lancastrian author Alice Hornby Mary tries to please everyone all the time, after all that's what she's done practically her whole life, until Ethan points out that her life has been beige.
As the book progresses we see the secrets and lies that have pushed Mary down her life's path. The incidents that have shaped her behaviour and coloured her attitude towards others. I have to say by the end of the book the only character that I felt came out well was Ethan, everyone else appeared to behave very badly, to lie, and to keep secrets for, that terrible cliche, 'her own good'. Leo, in particular, seemed to be a cheating, selfish, egotistical, lazy waste of space - personally I would have set fire to his car. Mary on the other hand appeared to be a complete doormat, I did wonder if Mary would have been so accepting/forgiving if Leo had left her for another woman, and I did want to shake her at times and tell her to get a job.
I also thought there were too many coincidences, things tied together too neatly and everyone turned out not to be so bad after all, maybe its because Mary resolved her issues from the past.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed this novel. I liked the unravelling of past secrets, I liked the romance and I liked the Mary Hornby sleuthing.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in return for an honest review.
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