The Second Husband

In the bookshop

"Since graduating from University College London, Louise Candlish has had various jobs in publishing and journalism, most recently working as a copywriter. She left to spend time in Italy, where she wrote Prickly Heat, and now lives in London with her partner and young daughter."

Single mother Kate Easton is struggling with her financial situation, especially since her ex announced that he would become a father again and would have to cut his allowance to her. I find it a tad difficult to feel sorry for her, however, since she lives in a nine-room-flat in London. Anyway, she has to take in a lodger and this is when Davis Calder enters the scene.

Kate has sworn never to marry again, but Davis, the charming language teacher, takes her by storm and not only her but her whole family AND her ex-husband who appreciates the help their seventeen-year-old daughter Roxana gets from him. They get married and right after their honeymoon things go terribly wrong.

Predictable? Tell me about it! There were many hints pointing at the disaster along the way and the main character Kate would have had to have been both deaf and blind to ignore them. As far as the reader is concerned, the publisher made it frustratingly easy by printing a real spoiler on the cover.

Since I do not want to give the story away totally, I will just say that no woman or mother in her right mind would act or react like Kate does in the book, in case this happened in real life, which I very much doubt it would. Neither do I believe there are many seventeen-year-olds who would act like Kate’s daughter Roxy does. Maybe men resembling Kate’s first husband could be found somewhere, but the second one is just too much.

Still, I enjoyed the easy writing style of Louise Candlish and the funny and descriptive expressions in the dialogues. As a description of a forty-something woman and mother in today’s London, it has no value at all, and will be certainly be blacklisted by any feminist reader with self-respect.

And nobody as stupid as Kate Easton can live in a nine-room-flat in London, have a job and raise two children!

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/c/louise-candlish/

Review by Sanne