I have been in one major reading slump this year so this is my first time posting a review in a while. I wish I could start off with something I enjoyed more than this.
Let's start with my issues with the plot. In this story we follow Leanne and Nichole who have both recently left their unfaithful husbands. Leanne is Nichole's mother in law and her son learned his cheating ways from his father so she feels responsible for the breakup of Nichole's marriage. Leanne finally takes a stand against her own husband in a show of support only when Nichole leaves her son. This is already a bit of a strange setup for a story in my opinion. Leanne put up with the infidelity for 35 years and only left when Nichole left her son? A bit of a stretch for me to believe that would be the final straw if she allowed herself to be a doormat for that many years. Then we add in the trite characters meant to be the new men in their lives which is a whole new level of cliché and was just too much for me to handle at points. Leanne meets Nikolai who is from Ukraine and has been in America for five years already when he finally decides to take her English as a second language class. Nichole simultaneously meets Rocco who is a blue collar toe truck driver who is short tempered and an Italian stereotype straight out of Jersey Shore. The ex-husbands weren't any more original unfortunately. Leanne's ex, Sean, and their son, Jake, who is Nichole's ex are completely uninventive cutouts of slick businessmen who are not used to being told no.
I liked the premise and thought it had a lot of potential for evoking real emotion based on the subject matter. I was wrong. The entire story made me angry at these women. Let's start with Leanne. She lived in a loveless marriage where she cooked, cleaned, and entertained for her husband in order to maintain his perfect image at the country club. All the while she was fully aware of his multitude of affairs and made a conscious decision to look the other way. When she finally did leave she met Nikolai who was one of her students. Now Nikolai's accent and broken English were just too much to bear at many points. He was made to sound stupid and after five years in America I found it hard to believe his English and understanding of idioms was still that bad. He was almost stalker like in how he followed Leanne everywhere and the insta-love was a bit unnerving with these two. But when he finally met Sean who has a health crisis and needs Leanne's help after two years apart, Nikolai lost all points for me. He physically held onto Leanne while she spoke to Sean, stared him down, later told him off and that Leanne was his woman now. He laid down the law for her so to speak and told her she was not allowed to cook or clean for Sean anymore. He was possessive to a degree that was unacceptable. The way the author seemed to want to make this a romantic gesture on Nikolai's part was truly scary and sends an awful message for women and young girls alike.
Moving on to Nichole and her new love interest, Rocco. Nichole is portrayed as a strong woman who immediately left her husband, Jake, the moment she found out about his infidelity. She fought him for two years in court to get the divorce finalized. But the moment it is, she breaks down. Now this was understandable and one of the only real emotional moments in the story where I could feel the genuine heartbreak one might feel in that situation. But, then she meets Rocco and it's downhill from there. Rocco is a stereotypical blue collar man who hangs out in biker bars and has a shady past. We are meant to believe that Nichole, who is a country club princess with a taste for expensive fashion and handbags immediately starts to fall for this man who is the complete opposite of everything she has ever been attracted to. She meets his drunken friends at a bar and just fits right in while eating her pizza with a knife and fork and ordering wine in a biker bar. He tells his friends she is "his woman" and she just smiles up at him. It was not believable in any way that a well to do, educated woman who stood up to her husband and fought him in court for two years would just go along with being possessed the way Rocco tried to possess her. Rocco also had violent outbursts when they fought and she just cried and felt responsible for his overblown and out of control reactions. At one point she slips on ice and is laying on the sidewalk unable to move and Rocco just sits in his truck and lets her lay there because they are fighting. It was more than I could handle and I almost didn't finish the book because of it.
These seemed like two weak women who married for money and status and then settled for possessive and frankly emotionally abusive men when those marriages failed. They just traded being trophy wives for their executive husbands to being owned by overly aggressive, possessive men who had unhealthy obsessions with them and they just kowtowed to please them. I wouldn't waste my time on this book or it's extremely unhealthy portrayal of relationships.
