Back of the book :
Sometimes friendship crosses a line . . .
What are the things you know about people when you’ve been friends for twenty years?
A group of close friends, their bonds forged at the nursery gates two decades ago, have celebrated, commiserated and grown together: they thought they all knew each other so well.
Until the affair.
Now a crack appears in everything.
Could one betrayal really destroy it all?
Other People’s Husbands is a story of friendship and love, crossing boundaries and breaking vows, of trying to fix what you believed could never be broken.
What I think :
Phil & Georgina
Kit & Natalie
Ross & Vanessa
Andrew & Flick
Dom & Sarah
Rupert & Annie,
With their assortment of children this group of people have been friends forever, well, since they met at the gates of nursery school many years ago. Twenty years and counting. They know each other very well however, maybe some would say too well …
The have been there for each other through all the ups and downs in life, now in their 40’s and 50’s with grown up children, the group think they’ve seen it all and done it all – Together.
However then the inevitable happens and there is an affair and it changes everything …
Can they weather this storm or will it be the end for this group of best friends … ?
I did enjoy this book, however I did find it slow going to start with, but I think that’s because with all the characters involved, and there is quite a list, you have to lay down the groundwork and introduce everyone.
I thought the many characters where well written and I did find myself feeling for a couple of them at times and wondering what I would do in their position.
It is a tale that tells of female relationships, friendships, heartbreaks, emotions and real life. After the initial slowness I did find myself reading quite big chunks and well into the night as I needed to know what was going to happen next.
This book is ideal to take on holiday with you as its quite an easy read.
I give this book 8/10 (5 Stars)
Published by Michael Joseph on 21/07/22
The biggest Thank you to Courtney Jefferies at ED PR for the review copy of the book in return for an honest review.
Here for your reading pleasure is an extract from the book.
Extract :
Other People’s Husbands by Elizabeth Noble – Chapter 1
You could see the newlywed sparkle between them – the tenderness. His proud eyes followed her everywhere she walked. Or swayed. She’d definitely drunk the most, of the women at least, but it didn’t make her sloppy or embarrassing, like a fourth glass might have made Georgie. She just became her funnier.
Vanessa and Ross seemed terribly clever. Properly intellectual. The type who read more than one newspaper, even on weekdays, and listened to Radio 4 instead of Radio 2.
They’d met at Cambridge, she knew. She imagined all their other friends were professors and junior government ministers and book editors. Georgie was pretty sure she wasn’t smart enough to get into a serious conversation with them. She wasn’t quite as sure who made her feel that way – was it them, or did she do it to herself?
But here she was. Here they were, the three of them, her, Phil and Liam, curled up now under a crochet blanket on an ancient green velvet chaise-longue at the foot of the bed in the room they’d been given. Liam, her beautiful and precious little boy, with his ginger curls and his dusting of pale freckles, was, it seemed, her golden ticket into this particular club.
They wouldn’t have been her friends at school or university, these women – she was sure of it. She’d have envied them, imitated them, admired them, maybe even despised them.
It was different for the guys. Men didn’t evaluate, didn’t keep score. Not in the same way, she thought. They might all have been on the same football team, or propping up the same bar, and it would have been easier for them to be friends. An architect, a designer, a doctor, an entrepreneur, a house-husband and an insurance broker walk into a bar… They’d fallen, it seemed, into a quick and easy, matey friendship. If they had less in common than their wives – maybe if they only had in common those wives, their children and their postcodes – it didn’t seem so obvious.
It was always more complicated for women. It always had been. But then Liam had been lined up between Natalie’s Stella and Annie’s Louis, and been invited to play with Vanessa’s Daisy, and shared a lift to Sarah’s Dylan’s birthday party with Flick’s Zoë. And over a few months, via dozens of playdates, a hundred cups of tea, and a Christmas fair committee, all this had happened, and now they were ‘a gang’. She’d even used the word, on the phone to her mother, turning down an invitation to stay for the bank holiday. ‘We’d have loved to, but we’re away with the gang.’
And there were years to come. Years and years. These children would grow up together. And these people were going to be her friends. Hers and Phil’s. She wanted to savour every moment, but at the same time, she couldn’t wait. And it could only get better, right ?
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