Publishing year: 2014
RATING: SO SO
SPOILERS!!!
This was a very strange book that I read while I was away in the mountains in the last few days. The main character is Jenn, married to Greg and stepmother to Emma. Greg was widowed when his first wife died after giving birth. So Emma never knew her mother, so Jenn has been the only mother she has known. Yet, things have become tense between them since Emma turned thirteen two years ago.
Now Jenn and Greg are on holiday in Majorca, and they are expecting Emma to arrive the following day. The girl is fifteen and in a relationship with Nathan, who is seventeen. Emma has begged to be allowed to bring her boyfriend to the villa that her parents have hired, and thanks to Jenn, Greg has agreed.
When the young couple arrive, Jenn is suddenly besotted with the teenager, who she thinks is handsome. Soon she and Nathan have engaged in a sexual relationship behind her daughter’s and husband’s backs. I find her totally unlikeable, and I didn’t like Nathan either.
There are a series of ups and downs as Jenn fluctuates from wanting him to despising him. There are very hot sexual descriptions. There is a third person involved, a hippy girl.
In the end Nathan leaves when suddenly Emma goes missing after Jenn and he spend a night having sex everywhere in the house. Greg goes to find her, and Jenn realizes where she is, and then she finds her. Emma explains that the reason why Nathan and she argued was because he was fooling around with Monica, the hippy girl. When they return, Nathan is nowhere to be seen. Jenn has been tempted to tell the truth several times, but in the end when her family seems fine, she decides to keep quiet. Yet, the last day of their holiday in Majorca we understand that she is going to be found out. Jenn told her husband that the night when she was with Nathan, she had gone to a tapas bar for a sandwich but the tapas bar, which they used to frequent in other years, was closed. So that last night Greg, Jenn, and Emma are eating out, and we understand Greg is taking them to the tapas bar which Jenn claimed she had had her sandwich in.
I have to say that I didn’t enjoy the book very much. I wasn’t shocked by the tawdry scenes, but I found some of the chapters too sordid and strange. The main character is so hateful; I can’t understand how she could go for this young man when he was Emma’s boyfriend. The girl was her daughter even though they didn’t share any blood. How could Jenn be so callous and horrible? I just couldn’t understand her. And what was the allure of Nathan? I just didn’t get it.
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