Books: Wives Behaving Badly

Wives Behaving Badly
By Elizabeth Buchan
Read by Justine Eyre
Copyright 2006
10 hours

This is the second Buchan book I've read, though apparently I forgot about the first one until I started putting things together to write this review.

Her first, Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, I gave 3 stars in a review on this blog. I confess I don't remember it even after reading my rather skimpy review of it.

Anyway, that first book was about the same characters. Both of these books examine a marriage gone wrong, and deal with the first wife (Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman) and in Wives Behaving Badly, the second wife.

Wives Behaving Badly is told from Minty's point of view. She is the second wife who stole Nathan from Rose (the heroine of the first book). Minty is, to put it bluntly, a rather forthright and not-nice character. She is not evil, by any means, but she is very selfish and self-centered. She wanted what Rose had - a family - and so she took it.

We join the Minty as she tries to juggle marriage with Nathan, their two twin sons, and a job. At first she works part time but her heart is really in her career, not in raising a family. They are fairly wealthy, apparently, able to afford a live-in nannie/housekeeper, at any rate. I don't know too many people who can do that.

Unfortunately Nathan has a heart attack, and Minty finds herself relying on Rose, the jilted wife. The book offers up a bit of hope I suppose for damned relationships, and implies that there are some people who are in your life for a reason, and they will stay there, even if you're not sure why you are hauling them along.

The story is set in Britain, and the reader has a nice British accent.

I could not reconcile the title with the story, though. Wives Behaving Badly rather implies illicit affairs and other such naughtiness. That was not the case.

I will give this one 3 stars, too, but I am glad I am listening to these in the car. (My husband would not give it 3 stars; he listened to some of it while we were traveling last weekend and he did not care for it. But I pointed out it was a chick-lit book.)

This is the third book I have read this year. I am going for 50, so I am on track with one a week.