Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #76042 in Books
• Published on: 2007-01-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 356 pages

Daily Express
'An effortless read, somewhat racy and easy on the brain. Enjoy.'

Vanessa Feltz, BBC London
'I'm so sucked into it. Buy it and have a good read of it this
afternoon'

Woman
'This poignant tale holds your attention till the last page'

Customer Reviews

Do we still have to be either the wife or mistress?
I'm not a great reader of chick-lit as it always seems so repetitive but needing a break I gave this a try and found it an enjoyable and really quite thoughtful read. Yes, there are some clichés: the dutiful wife at home in her Wiltshire farmhouse cooking endlessly on her Aga vs. the bright, ambitious lawyer mistress with her urban flat in Holborn... and as some other reviewers have mentioned some of the ditzy situations the wife get herself into (pink fluffy slippers, glitter at the gynaecologists) are just irritatingly silly and derivative. But there is a bit more going on than this. The struggles, for example, of Nicholas, basically a good husband who loves his wife and family and yet is sexually enthralled by Sara are interesting. And the clichés Sara repeats to herself about how his marriage must be dead are revealed to be precisely that - clichés.
Disturbingly, though, women are divided into two categories: the wife and the mistress, and the separation between them seems a stable one, however hard Stimpson might have tried to dissolve it. The revolving chapters narrated by each of the three protagonists keep our sympathies floating between them all and, for me at least, switching between them. Where this doesn't work, however, is where the same situation is told by different characters: rather than giving us new insight into how it seemed to them, it actually tends to descend into pure repetition.
So overall this was a good read with some minor flaws of execution. I think it would have been better if Stimpson had ditched the obligatory chick-lit ditzy humour (the waxing scene...) and concentrated more on the painful drama played out. A good read.

fab fab fab
i couldn't but this book down it was brillant form start to finish, i didn't want it to end. i have never read anything by tess stimson before but now her books are a must for anyone's shelf. i highly recommend this book and all the ress from tess stimson. A*

The Adultery Club
This was the 1st book I have read of Tess Stimson & I just couldn't put it down!!(i'm not the biggest bookworm so that is sayin something.

I enjoy Tess'style of writing & found that her characters become very real & you can otrelate to them.(whether they have acted imorally or not)