Wednesday, November 14, 2018

The Other Woman by Sandie Jones- Book Review

For the sake of being open and honest, I will admit at the beginning of this review, I did not read this entire book. I read the beginning 3/4ths of the middle, and then jumped to the ending. I will explain why in the review, but I wanted to put it up front in fairness.

I am a big fan of Reese Witherspoon’s book club Hello Sunshine. She has a tendancy to pick books which are interesting and can get me thinking. When I saw this was the pick for the month and it was a thriller, I jumped to grab it.

This is the story of Emily and Adam- a young couple who have a quick and fast love affair which begins to turn serious. It is also the story of Pammie, Adam’s mother (the other woman dun dun DUNNNNN) who does everything she possibly can to keep Emily and Adam apart from one another. Pammie regularly insults Emily, faints when the two get engaged, and is just a pain in Emily’s world.

Emily has a good support system, but slowly is dragged away from them because of Adam and Pammie. As Emily is wondering what to do, she begins to have coffee with Adam’s brother. Emily begins to have feelings for him too. Will she act on them? Will Pammie get in the way?

A good protagonist makes or breaks a story. If this book were a movie, I would be yelling at the screen because at times I was internally yelling at Emily in the book- JUST LEAVE! While it may be true love, yadda yadda yadda, Emily regularly reminds the reader she has been with Adam only a few weeks and then a few months and through this entire time Pammie has verbally attacked her and Adam has snapped at her quite a number of times. Why didn’t she just leave?!?

Emily as protagonist wouldn’t be so bad, but Jones wrote an over the top antagonist in Pammie. Up against Pammie, Emily becomes more brooding in the corner than standing up to Pammie. Emily will get her licks in, but Pammie is too strong of an antagonist compared to Emily, who makes so many bad choices, it will drive you crazy.

Then there is a twist. I knew there was going to be a twist going into the book. I won’t say what the twist is, but you can probably figure it out about a quarter way into the book, I did which is why after reading about 3/4ths of the book, I had to just skip ahead to see if I was right and I was. While Jones is a very skilled writer and the book is fun, even at 300+ pages, it was becoming too long. Too many bad choices by Emily, too many one ups by Pammie, and Adam is just too perfect that he doesn’t makes much sense when he lashes out at Emily. Again, after the first one, why not just leave since you knew each other only a month at the time!

I would say this book is enjoyable and would even be a good book club book. It just wasn’t may taste and I had to skip to get to the already knowable ending. Take that as you will.