I don't even know what this book was supposed to be, but it pissed me off so much. The most positive thing I can say was that it was an incredibly fast read and only took me about two hours. Characters will be referred to as husband and wife in this review because I have already forgotten their names (finished this book an hour ago) and can't be bothered to go find them. They had basically no personalities anyway.

The main character in this book cheats on her husband. She's 43 and going through a midlife crisis and finds a young hot guy in a bar for a fling. And then she gets pregnant by him with a much wanted baby. Based on this premise, I was not expecting a heartwarming lovely story. I was expecting to delve deeply into these characters' emotions, their thought process, the guilt and shame and decision making.

Wife is pregnant and has desperately wanted a third child for years, but if she remains pregnant, she'll have to confess the affair to Husband who will likely leave her. That leaves so much space to explore what she's experiencing. I don't have to love her as a person, but I wanted to see inside her mind and heart. That should be gut wrenching. But it kind of gets two sentences of thought and that's it.

This whole book was so shallow and superficial. It spent the whole time just describing the action of the story and the most basic feelings the characters could have. Like wow who could have imagined that wife feels regret over her stupid fling that meant nothing? And guilt for cheating? Groundbreaking. There was nothing more complicated than that, and based on the premise, every character ought to have had very complicated feelings.

Everything was so easily resolved. A hug, an apology, a 'let's work forward even if we can't go back,' like that was enough to add depth. Sometimes a few tears thrown in. The oldest daughter is seventeen and hates her mother for breaking up their family, but changes her mind randomly one day because mommy said she was struggling with feeling old. Totally understandable. Instant forgiveness.

I hated the ending. This is gonna be some spoilers, so I'll tag it, but I just needed to say I hated the ending.

Spoiler

Eventually she and the husband reconcile and live together with the guy she cheated with happily ever after. Which to be honest, could've been done well. But there's so much effort put into the husband cooing over the baby. Wife had always wanted a third baby and he said no and got a vasectomy. But now she has a baby that's so well behaved. Never cries. Sleeps through the night. Such a good baby. I don't care that the husband had a change of heart, but I hated how much time was spent on describing how good the baby was. So should I assume that had the baby been colicky, the husband wouldn't have come back? Because that's the vibe it gave me. It's not a heartwarming ending when all the characters come across like assholes.

Also the husband is just suddenly okay with the man the wife cheated with being a part of their family now. He has no jealousy or animosity. Despite spending a year planning to divorce his wife, this is now totally fine with zero development. End rant.

Shallow. Annoying. Every character was a void of personality. Nothing was interesting. This whole book felt like a void of literature. I'm probably overly harsh for what it deserves right now, but this was just one of those books that irritated me on every level and I'm so mad I thought it was going to be interesting and thought provoking. I can't remember ever reading something that offered less than this did.