This is the author’s first novel, so I’m going to try to be nice…
After reading half of the book, nevermind.
The main characters, Violet and James, married quickly, were wildly in love for a year, and then they had an argument that halted their happy marriage in its tracks. The couple live in the same house, but they have a cold marriage where they try to avoid and ignore each other. We haven’t learned what the argument was about a third of the way through, only that it involves trust and maybe James’s father, but it’s almost guaranteed to be something dumb that could have been easily resolved if the two of them had maybe just talked about it. Maybe a third party to smack them upside the head would have been useful. One of them could have posted on the AITA (Am I The Asshole) reddit. They’ve held on to this argument for four whole years. Get it together, people. They probably knew if they talked about it, they would be told that they were being dumb.
Ok, halfway through and we got to the argument. As predicted, it is dumb, and not worth the FOUR YEARS they wasted on it. It would have been a stretch if it lasted four months! I’m sick of them already, and can’t see how their friends dealt with it. Both of them miss their marriage and want to bone each other desperately, but they’re hanging on to this stupid argument. They keep trying to one-up the other with situations that will make the other person worry and feel miserable, and the first one wasn’t even deliberate! In a normal situation, after the initial shock set in with the “revenge,” the ruse should have ended and the couple would have apologized like adults and gone on with their lives. But these two, especially Violet, are not adults and are acting childishly.
To be fair, there are a few, a very few, clever lines and situations, usually not with our main characters. But I’m too disgusted with those two to finish reading. Ok, so I skimmed through the rest of it, and I am pleased can let you know that almost everyone told them they were being stupid and dumb. I can also see how the author was setting up for a series (that I will not be reading.)
This fulfills the CBR12 Bingo square of “Debut”