Husbands - Adele Parks

This was the first book I had read by Adele Parks so I don't know how it compares to other books of hers, but I was quite impressed with her style - it used modern, quirky and easy to understand language. The only thing I found a bit confusing was the way she laid out her chapters. There were 4 main characters, and each chapter was for a character, written in present tense as if that character is telling the story. Each chapter had the name of teh ...
...too long, you would just get into the flow of one of the characters when it would jump then to another chapter and another character. I would forget for a minute what character I was reading about, so I did find each character being given a chance to use first person language a bit confusing - it's easier when it's just one person throughout.

The four main characters were Bella, Laura, Steve and Philip. Bella is married to Philip and ... more

This was the first book I had read by Adele Parks so I don't know how it compares to other books of hers, but I was quite impressed with her style - it used modern, quirky and easy to understand language. The only thing I found a bit confusing was the way she laid out her chapters. There were 4 main characters, and each chapter was for a character, written in present tense as if that character is telling the story. Each chapter had the name of teh character at the top, but as the chapters were not too long, you would just get into the flow of one of the characters when it would jump then to another chapter and another character. I would forget for a minute what character I was reading about, so I did find each character being given a chance to use first person language a bit confusing - it's easier when it's just one person throughout.

The four main characters were Bella, Laura, Steve and Philip. Bella is married to Philip and has quite a comfortable life, while her friend, Laura, is a single mum to Eddie with a failed marriage behind her. Laura meets Stevie and begins to date him. He seems charming and is really good with her young son. He does a tribute act to Elvis and, for some reason that Laura cannot understand, Bella does not seem keen on Laura's new partner. She even tries to put Laura off him.

Steve gets through to the final of an Elvis competition in Vegas and gets to take 3 people with him. He asks Laura and because 2 of his friends cannot go, Laura persuades him that taking Bella and Philip would be a good idea.

While in Vegas, it transpires that Bella and Steve were not only once an item, but they were once married (I'm not giving anything away by telling you that, because that comes out quite early in the story). More to the point, they never did get a divorce, which makes Bella a bigamist. On top of all that, old feelings begin to resurface between Bella and Steve.

Whether everyone gets their happy ending is for you to read and find out, but I did enjoy this book as their is a lot of humour throughout it. I liked the fact that there is a character or a place or a thing in the book that readers can relate to (the book talks about Blackpool as well as going into a bit of detail about Elvis), and Bella has issues from her past which maybe some people reading would be able to understand and emphasise with (she lost her mum young and was bullied at school). However, I think there are some things that are a bit far fetched throughout the book - the way the workman in Laura's house is able to realise there is something wrong with her lovelife and will talk to her deeply about it, the way some things are resolved, and the way Bella flits from job to job then ends up with no job at all. I think if she had been so ashamed of the way she was brought up after her mum died (as she says she was), that she would have had more ambition to be something. Instead, she married someone who was completely different to her father - and I do understand why she did that. But given that Philip is well off, it's easy to see that she has maybe married for the money. The book makes references to teh standards Philip has, but you feel that he is settling for second best withe Bella as she doesn't seem to know who or what she wants.

The author had given excuses for Bella acting the way she did, but I didn't feel it helped me emphasise with her - it perhaps did to some extent, but part of me felt someone should shake her an/or give her a slap, and to tell her to get over herself. My empathy throughout was with Laura.

This was a good read, though, and I would recommend it. I got my copy from the library, so if you don't want to spend a lot on a copy I would try your local library, or Amazon or Ebay for a cheap copy. 

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