Sunday, April 01, 2007

In Another Man's Bed, Review for RD

In Another Man’s Bed by Francis Ray

St. Martin’s Griffin, February 2007


Justine Crandall walked in on her husband with another woman. Everything she had ever dreamed about was dashed in that instant. A short time later, while in pursuit of her and trying to explain, his car goes off a cliff.

In the months that follow Justine is faced with the decision about whether to take him off life support. How do you make that decision when your heart is broken? How do you know why you’re making it?

In the meantime Justine’s high school sweet, Dalton, comes back to town and they fall in love all over again. Once again Justine is faced with a choice – be with the man she loves and loves her back or honour her marriage vows and stay true to the man who cheated on her and now lies in coma.

I thought the concept for this story was a good one. What a difficult decision this must be for anyone. The choices Justine made were steered by everything she had grown up to believe in and by that age old feeling that we should never let anyone down. She was trying to make everyone happy while drowning herself. I thought Ms. Ray portrayed Justine’s character very well for the most part, although sometimes I did think she needed more back bone and was thrilled to see it arrive at the end of the book. I loved Dalton’s character and thought he was the perfect accompaniment to Justine.

Unfortunately, I found the side love story of Brianna and Patrick to be distracting from the main plot. On one hand I though Brianna’s immediate resistance to Patrick, bordering on rudeness, a little over the top. On the other hand I found Patrick’s character to be pushy and arrogant and frankly if a man stalked me (he watched her every move noting when she left for work and arrived home, showed up to her work, and on her runs, just to name a few things) that way I certainly don’t think I’d be romantically interested in him.

The blurb on the back of the book focused on Justine but the actual story seemed split between the two love stories – that of Justine and Dalton and that of Brianna and Patrick. While I liked that Justine and Brianna were best friends going through stuff together I just did not like the Patrick/Brianna thing and it pulled me out of the story too often for me to focus on the rest of it. However, I think the storyline of how Justine handled this touchy situation was very well done.

I give this 3.5 kisses.

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posted by Michelle @ 3:29 p.m. Comments: 0