MAN this was depressing. Not a book to listen to when you are having the February/Marches.

What works: Letting the reader know right from the get-go that Isabel Gillies' perfect college professor husband "Josiah" was going to, almost without warning, leave her and their two small children. As things unfolded it was a bit like watching a horror movie. "No! Don't invited Sylvia over for dinner! Your husband is totally going to have an affair with her and he's going to tell you he wants a divorce and it's going to happen any minute and you don't even know it's coming and my stomach really hurts right now!"

What doesn't: There is a bit more jumping around than I would have liked. Gillies repeats herself a lot. And she seemed to have spent a lot of time in some crazy denial about the situation. ("You can't be leaving me because look how perfect our life is with our expensive wallpaper and our summers in Maine!") To be fair, though, the whole mess went down in less than a semester, so who can blame her for being gobsmacked.

Last note: I swear, every time Josiah denied that anything was going on between him and Sylvia and then accused Isabel of being jealous and irrational, I wanted to kill someone. Sack up, assholes.