Separate Lives
Author: Kathryn Flett
288 pages in Kindle
Published: July 5, 2016
Dates Read: November 8-19, 2016
My Rating: 2 stars
Book Summary from Amazon:
Your partner of ten years, and the father of your children (though not your husband, because the two of you agreed that marriage seems so…old-fashioned), receives a text message. A text message you happen to see when you’re getting ready for work one day:
Start living a different kind of life… P 🙂 xxx
You don’t even know anyone with the initial P, but even if you did, the smiley face and kisses would send a shiver of fear down your spine that everything you and your partner have built and which seemed so strong, might be in danger of collapse. How could you miss that?
Narrated by Susie, her partner Alex, and the mysterious P, this is an achingly funny, moving and honest portrayal of modern romance, parenthood, and adultery.
My Review:
The premise of the book made me want to read Separate Lives. Unfortunately, I got a different book than I was expecting.
I think I was expecting a ‘fight to save your relationship’ kind of book. Separate Lives was very different from that kind of book. I do like books with multiple narrators, as you get multiple points of view to get the whole story. The three narrators are Susie, Alex and P. Susie’s narration was a ‘standard’ type of narration, Alex’s narration was through emails, and the ‘Mysterious P’s narration is through letters to her mother (P turns out to be Pippa, this is not a secret as we quickly find out who ‘P’ is).
Issues I had with the book:
-All three of the protagonists were not likable. I did not really care what happened to them. Yes, Susie discovers the text, but there is something going on with her. I can’t say what without spoilers.
– There were a few twists that were supposed to shock you but my reaction to them was just the opposite. This must have been because I was not attached to the characters.
-Susie and Pippa’s narrations tended to drag on and mentioned things that were not relevant to the story. I found myself scanning through parts of both of their narrations. This happened more with Susie than Pippa, and some of the things Pippa would say in her letters to her mom I would not even say to my mom!
Towards the end of Separate Lives I did start to like Pippa a small amount. The last few chapters of the book did pick up for me. In the end of the book, that original text has so much more meaning that it did at the beginning of Separate Lives. I know some books are not for everyone and unfortunately Separate Lives was not for me.
I received a copy of Separate Lives from NetGalley.