{Review} The Ever After: A Novel by Sarah Pekkanen (@SarahPekkanen @AtriaBooks)

In this intricate and enthralling domestic drama the author of the “gossipy page-turner” (Glamour) The Perfect Neighbors goes deep into a marriage in crisis, peeling back layers of secrets to discover where the relationship veered off course—and whether it is worth saving.

Josie and Frank Moore are happy… at least Josie thinks they are. As parents of two young girls in the Chicago suburbs, their days can be both busy and monotonous, and sometimes Josie wonders how she became a harried fortysomething mother rather than the driven career woman she once was. But Frank is a phenomenal father, he’s handsome and charismatic, and he still looks at his wife like she’s the beautiful woman he married more than a decade ago. Josie isn’t just happy—she’s lucky.

Until one Saturday morning when Josie borrows her husband’s phone to make a quick call—and sees nine words that shatter her world.

Now Josie feels as if she is standing at the edge of a sharp precipice. As she looks back at pivotal moments in the relationship she believed would last forever, she is also plunging ahead, surprising everyone (especially herself) with how far she will go to uncover the extent of her husband’s devastating secret.

​Josie Moore’s entire world came crashing down one morning in front of a Starbuck’s. A text message meant for her husband calls into question everything she once held as true – her marriage, her family and even her place in the universe.
 
After Frank admits to the affair, she has to know just how far he had gone to cover it up.  What she finds is completely unexpected.  

​She discovers how strong she really is and that sometimes love is worth another chance. 

He was so good at saying the right thing, at making Josie feel as if they were connected.  At ending a sensitive conversation on a positive note.

But when everything erupted, she also began to reevaluate what she’d once considered a strength in Frank.  When he cut short conversations with a line that he must have known would satisfy her, was he doing it because he was sharing his actual feelings, or was he dodging true intimacy?
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It made Josie wonder whether she’d ever truly known Frank’s deepest vulnerabilities, his most secret thoughts.  If she had married a man who had always been, in some ways, a stranger to her.

​The Ever After is an inside look at the modern marriage. It’s about how two people can get lost in modern life and forget the real reason why they started on their journey.  
 
I found it to be profoundly real and honest.  Sarah’s characters shine with an uncommon combination of strength and sensitivity and it left me feeling hopeful even in the wake of devastation. Because it’s the kind of heartbreak that could be closer to us than we ever really know…

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