I can’t remember how many times I thought someone was The One, but I know I’ve had to kiss a lot of frogs before I found my own Prince Charming. The path was riddled with self-doubt, interfering wicked witches, and wondering whether it was all worth the heartache. As it turns out, none of them were until I finally did find my HEA. I’d become an expert on navigating all the Single Lady tropes: moving to another country in search of the elusive happy ending, getting a better job, enduring the gossip about why I was single. I’d recommend all of these if you are having relationship trouble or doubts about yourself. You're not alone!
Forty-three-year-old Erica Cantelli has finally got everything she wanted – she's put an ocean between herself and her ex, obtained full custody of the kids, and married her dream man Julian.
The only fly in the champagne? Julian wants her to have his baby. Which is not as easy as he seems to think. So IVF it is, with frustrations galore and that is the just the beginning of her troubles when Julian's old flame, Genie Stacie, turns up offering Julian what Erica can't give him. She thought her days of having to fight for her relationship were over, but a storm is brewing...
I thoroughly enjoyed reading Motherland because it resonates with my own theme of writing about the difficulties of being a wife and a mother.
Here, the heroine, Fran Clarke, a 37-year-old stay-at-home mum, is completely flawed. She is overwhelmed by motherhood, marriage, and has given up keeping up with the Joneses. Her former career as a talented voice artist has been replaced by a new task, i.e., drinking, and she repeatedly misses every tiny break life may throw her way.
She is also convinced that her husband Richard is having an affair but does nothing to confront him. And yet there is something so endearing about her that you can’t help but root for her to get her act together.
Her husband is doing all he can to keep the marriage and the family going, but he, too, is overwhelmed by her decline. I also felt for her when she was deceived by one of her ‘friends’. It seems her life is falling apart and that she is bringing everyone else down with her. But then something inside her clicks…
Stay-at-home mum Fran Clarke is approaching both her thirty-seventh birthday and crisis point. Once a brilliant voiceover artist, she now hasn't worked for years. The talent hasn't deserted her -- only her self-belief. She could have it all, if she could only see it. But with her confidence shot and a husband who no longer knows how to help her, most days all she sees is the bottom of a wine glass. Fran knows she has to stop the downward spiral before she self-destructs completely. But she hits rock bottom when she realises she can't even solve the problems of…
In this novel Florist Sadie Drew thinks her marriage depends on how good an impression she can make on the other corporate wives. Too bad she’s anything but a housewife.
She has her own career, her own personality, and her own friends. She doesn’t need to wear Mary Archer dresses. And yet, her husband Tom seems very disappointed at her inability to blend in with the other wives. Why can’t she be a good wife like all the others? Good question. Especially when we find out that Sadie and Tom had lost a baby. Now she wants to try again, but Tom is not having any of it.
Does he not love her anymore? Is he having an affair? What she doesn’t know is how much Tom has suffered for their loss, and how afraid he was to see Sadie shutting down after the miscarriage.
Sadie Drew thinks she must be the world's worst wife. She only needs to walk into a room to make it untidy. She wears flannel pyjamas in bed. Furry things breed in her fridge. But she's a busy working mother not a wifebot and husband Tom loves her as she is. Until he gets a hot new job and things change. There are alpha-wives to entertain. Nuclear rows. Unsettling secrets. And the smell of another woman's perfume on his suit. Sadie risks losing everything if she can't transform herself into the perfect wife...
Much like my own themes, Pastures Nouveaux is not only about starting over in the country, but having the courage to look at your relationship in the eye.
Rosie is engaged to a horrible columnist, Mark. And she keeps making excuses for him; he’s stressed, he’s unhappy, he’s on a deadline, etc. But he never shows her any great amount of genuine affection. It’s like he’s given up on them. And, perhaps, so has Rosie, who has chosen to ‘live with it’.
And when they move to the country village, Eight Mile Bottom, things take a turn for the worst, as nothing could be further from what they had expected from this move. Or is this the best thing that’s ever happened to Rosie?
The witty new novel from number one bestselling author of "Simply Divine" and "Bad Heir Day". Artist Rosie has always dreamed of a peaceful country cottage - but once she gets what she wants she finds out that village life is not the way she predicted it. A cast of hilarious characters conspire to ensure that life is not the same.
Added to the difficulties of being good enough for your partner, add weight issues and you have my favourite writing recipe for my own books, which is why I chose this story where columnist Candace Shapiro deals with her ex-boyfriend publicly humiliating her in his column called Good In Bed.
He exposes her frailties and through every article about her she comes to grips with her own faults, including her ‘solidly built body’. Ok, she needs to lose weight. So she joins a programme, a sort of Overeaters Anonymous, and meets Peter, the doctor in charge. He is confident she can be healthier because he sees in her a strength that her ex never saw. But when Candace finds out she’s pregnant by her ex, everything changes.
And when the baby is born prematurely and risks not making it, all the gloves are off and all her anger comes to the surface. Candace’s strength lies in her vulnerability.
#1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner brings to life an irresistibly funny and relatable heroine in the novel The Boston Globe called “funny, fanciful, extremely poignant, and rich with insight.”
For twenty-eight years, things have been tripping along nicely for Cannie Shapiro. Sure, her mother has come charging out of the closet, and her father has long since dropped out of her world. But she loves her friends, her rat terrier, Nifkin, and her job as pop culture reporter for The Philadelphia Examiner. She’s even made a tenuous peace with her plus-size body.
His ‘n’ Hers is about a love story gone awry. No one to blame. That’s just how the cookie crumbled. But now something has happened.
Allison and Jim’s cat Disco, the one they shared while they lived together, has just died, bringing back all the memories of when they shared that flat. Trouble is they both have new partners. After grilling themselves about what went wrong, who did what, and are they better off, Alison and Jim give each other a good hard look to understand what happened to them.
And is there still hope for them, despite their current partners? Were they meant to be?
A brilliant romantic comedy for fans of Bridget Jones's Diary.
A cat. A flat. And a couple who think it's over.
From their first meeting at the student union over a decade ago, Jim and Alison successfully navigated their way through first dates, meeting parents, moving in together and more . . . Then they split up and divided their worldly goods (including a sofa, a cat and their flat) into his 'n' hers.
Now, three years on and with new lives and new loves, they couldn't be happier. Until a chance encounter throws them back together, and causes them…
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and accomplishments that two Chinese brothers - American Immigrants - experience as they travel to California to build the Transcontinental Railroad.
Crossing is a vividly human re-imagining of the love, sacrifices, and history that laid tracks for the North America of today.
Leaving behind ancestral Chinese homelands and their family, brothers Yang and Lee face harrowing challenges as they join countless immigrants seeking a better life in the 1860s.
This story follows their remarkable journey across the ocean to San Francisco, then into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where they'll labor to build the Transcontinental Railroad. Surrounded by California's new marvels, and carrying their cultural traditions in their hearts, Yang and Lee find themselves in precarious situations. Their passions, struggles, dreams, and…
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