I read a book on the plane this week (one and a half times actually – don’t you love delays?) called “Wife Living Dangerously” by Debra Kent. Here’s the blurb:
As a perfect suburban wife and mother, Julia Flanagan has played by the rules, done what she’s told and put her family first for as long as she can remember. If she’s honest, she’d like a bit more excitement in her life – but wouldn’t everyone?
Then her best friends dare her to break the rules just for once. Taking on their challenge proves easier than she could have imagined: first she’s mixing recyclable glass with plastic; then she’s passing off shop-bought cakes as her own.
But when she meets the sexiest man she’s ever seen, and their work throws them together, she learns the true meaning of what it’s like to be a wife living dangerously. Now she faces the dilemma of how far she should go. And, more importantly, what she has got to lose.
I enjoyed this book tremendously – I would have reread it even if I hadn’t been trapped on a plane with no other entertainment options. It was extremely well written, and since it was done in first person, it had a very intimate feel – as if you were sharing the experience with a friend.
The situations and emotions described were very vivid and alive – and some of the observations on married life struck extremely close to home. Either the author herself had firsthand experience or she’d done her research well.
Reading this book made me think about the nature of romance in fiction. This book was not a romance book – I suppose it would be labeled “chick lit”, it was a bit too light for “women’s fiction – and yet the relationships that Julia had with her husband and with her temptation were the main story. The entire process of the other man wooing her, the agony and obsession she feels as she falls for him, the highs and the lows, her final decision and the satisfying conclusion (sorry, no spoilers!). This was more a slice of real life than the clean HEA a reader gets in a classic romance novel, and yet there were many parallels. I was actually glad I was on a plane when I started it because once I picked it up I simply didn’t want to put it down. I was gripped – as I am in any love story.
And really, isn’t that what romance is all about?
