‘My Husband’s Lover’
By Erin Kaye

Fans of Kaye’s previous novels, set in rural town Ballyfergus, will enjoy a return to the locality and its residents and to the lives of its inhabitants and their ups and downs.

We are quickly introduced to Chris, who has been married to Paul for over twenty years. She considers herself to be happily married, though she confesses to being a little bit bored and together they have two boisterous and typically temperamental teenage children Finn and Hannah.

Life is routine and at times tedious but Chris is happy with the cards she has been dealt and looking forward to the arrival of her old school friend who she hasn’t seen in years– Bernie is a childhood friend with whom she’s shared many ups and downs and who has been living in Australia for years. She’s coming home to Ballyfergus and has asked Chris if she can stay with her and her family for a month.

Chris has agreed– much to the annoyance of her sister Karen who thinks it’s a bit rich of Bernie to just turn up on Chris’s doorstep after all this time and expect free bed and board– but Chris doesn’t mind.

In fact, she’s quite excited at the thought of renewing old acquaintances and anyway she thinks Karen just isn’t happy because Bernie once stole her boyfriend when they were teenagers… surely it’s time they laid that matter to rest?

It’s true. Karen never liked Bernie. She did steal her boyfriend and while it was a long time ago and she’s happily married now to Tony and has two small children, Jack and Chloe, it still hurts. She feels unattractive and the last thing she needs is Bernie in her life again, stirring up trouble.

Karen has enough trouble of her own, like those rolls of fat under her stomach and having to get dressed in the dark– of course Tony says he loves her just the way she is, but he would say that, wouldn’t he?

In the meantime there’s her brother Raymond’s upcoming wedding to look forward to but that brings it’s own problems when she sees his stunning fiancée Shona and Tony talking just a little too intimately for her liking.
Bernie is independent and feisty but she’s also nervous. She has her own life in Australia and she’s a strong and liberated woman but returning to Ballyfergus makes her feel like an unloved little child all over again.

Her trip ‘home’ is not just a holiday but a quest. She lost her mother when she was a child and her father died not so long ago. She had a fraught relationship with him and she never returned for his funeral.

He cut her out of his will. Now she wants to know why. Maybe she’ll get some answers if she confronts her brothers… but first she must get to know Chris and her family all over again and staying with them throws up some surprises of their own and soon she finds love in the unlikeliest of places.

Read the trials and tribulations of all these gripping characters in Erin Kaye’s ‘My Husband’s Lover’– published by Poolbeg, available in all good bookshops now.

‘CHANGE OF HEART’
By Jodi Picoult

As an avid fan of the work of acclaimed American writer Jodi Picoult (right), I was anxiously awaiting her latest offering and to say I was not disappointed was something of an understatement.

Her ideas are always compelling and challenging and this was no different. They always make you stop and think about how you would react in a given situation.

Her previous plots have included rape, murder and suicide in a thought-provoking and sensitive way and this time Picoult has another moral dilemma which will make the reader pause and think twice.

June has lost her beloved husband in a car accident leaving her with baby Elizabeth. The police officer who breaks the news to her is Kurt Nealon and slowly over the years they fall in love and she falls pregnant.

Around the time of her pregnancy, they employ a handyman, Shay Bourne, who, after a period of employment with them, commits the cruellest act of all and murders the two people June loves most in the world, her husband Kurt and now eleven year old daughter Elizabeth.

Bourne is immediately arrested and he is convicted of murder and sentenced to death. All that keeps June from suicide herself is her new baby Claire and the eventual impending death of Shay Bourne.

But her hardship is not over and as Claire grows up it is clear that she is not like other children. She doesn’t have the same energy and she picks up infections easily and soon it emerges that she has a serious heart condition and will need a heart transplant. After a somewhat carefree childhood the situation is growing more and more precarious and her only hope is a new heart.

Shay Bourne becomes aware of her plight and in his apparent remorse, believes the only way he can make amends to June for taking away her husband and her other daughter is to donate his heart to Clare after his execution.

This would mean fighting to be allowed the right to die by hanging rather than lethal injection to preserve the heart so that it can be donated.

Therein lies the question? What should June do? What would you do? Would you grant your worst enemy’s dying wish to save the life of your remaining dying daughter?

As usual Picoult’s book is fascinating, emotive and heart-rending and you won’t want to get to the end because it will keep you gripped and, as usual, there is a twist to the tale. Another best-seller, I suspect, for this brilliant author.