The Pretend Wife » (Unabridged)

Bridget Asher is the author of My Husband’s Sweethearts. She lives on the Florida panhandle with her husband, who is lovable, sweet, and true of heart—and has given her no reason to inquire about his former sweethearts.

For Gwen Merchant, love has always been doled out in little packets—from her father, who buried himself in work after her mother's death, and from her husband, Peter, who's always been respectable and safe. But then an old college boyfriend, the irrepressible Elliot Hull, invites himself back into Gwen's life with a surprising proposition. Elliot, it turns out, is in need of a pretend wife, just for the weekend, in order to fulfill his dying mother's last wish. But as Gwen finds herself drawn into Elliot's quirky, wonderful family—and uncovers a few secrets about her own—she begins to question everything she has believed about love.

Publishers Weekly

With still more to say about marriage, fidelity and the importance of being wittily earnest, Asher (My Husband's Sweethearts)-Julianna Baggott's adult fiction pseudonym-brings an abundance of warmth and wisdom to this tale of lost-and-found love. Married woman Gwen Merchant agrees to pretend to be the newlywed of former beau Elliott Hull to appease his dying mom. Gwen, smothering in a marriage to Peter, jumps at the chance for a redo at an abruptly ended college romance, and it's a slippery slope that Gwen slides down with passion and verve, falling in love with Elliott and becoming attached to his sister and her precocious kids and the imperious and uncannily perceptive matriarch, Vivian. But while weaving one faux relationship, Gwen unthreads the very real sadness in her own tattered family, including a widowed dad and a marriage that hides more than it confides. It's more than a little disappointing, if not surprising, that Asher inserts an improbably happy ending to push the sweet and funny Gwen into a trite epiphany. (June)

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