About the Book:
Lou and Josh have been together for 14 years. They share two kids, a mortgage, careers and plenty of history. Now, after a particularly fraught Christmas, Lou is ready to ask herself: is this marriage worth hanging on to?
Every month for a year, Lou sets a different test for their relationship - from daily sex to brutal honesty - to help her decide if she should stay or go. Secrets are exposed, old wounds reopened and a true-to-life suburban love story unfolds.
I Give My Marriage a Year paints a sharply accurate, often hilarious picture of a modern Australian marriage. Lou and Josh are a couple on the edge, and their efforts to bring their relationship back from the brink will resonate with anyone who has ever asked themselves: is this enough?
Whose side will you take? Who deserves a second chance? And will Josh and Lou stay together or split for good?
Published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Published August 2020
My Thoughts:
Well, wasn't this just a book filled with unlikeable characters?! It opens with Lou making a personal pact to give her marriage a year while lying beside another man in the bed she shares with her husband. And she just got more detestable from that passage on.
While this story does deep dive into a long term relationship that has broken down, I feel it missed the mark for impact with Lou being so unlikeable. I couldn't muster any empathy for her and even when I might have been able to relate to her on something, her infidelity and unreasonable expectations she was placing onto her husband to read her mind and just be a better person while she continued to judge, resent and generally act like a selfish brat made this hardgoing in terms of relatability. Lou's mother was also hardgoing, and while the prickly mother in law is not unheard of, this one was just rude and out of line.
As to Josh, well, he annoyed me the least but I feel he deserved better. I wasn't convinced by, nor pleased with the ending. If this were a real life couple and Josh were my brother, friend, or son, I'd be advising him to quit flogging a dead horse. A relationship with as much resentment built up within it as their's had is doomed to fail. In real life anyway.
The audio narration was great with this one though and if I'd been reading instead of listening, I certainly would have given up on it. I think the story, as in the bones of it, had potential but it missed the mark for me on account of not being able to warm to the characters and consequently, I was unable to fully invest myself into their story.
No comments:
Post a Comment