The Affair

By Santa Montefiore

Book Overview

Previously published as The Perfect Happiness

Wonderfully wise Santa Montefiore will capture your heart with this "bittersweet and thought-provoking"* novel about a modern wife who must ask herself, Would I risk everything for love?

A wife who has forgotten her own beauty and allure. A distant, distracted husband. A smart, candlelit dinner party, witty conversation, and a charmingly rugged vineyard owner from South Africa. So begins Santa Montefiore's powerful and poignant new novel in which a woman who finds herself in a common predicament must confront the most unlikely aspects of herself.

"I hope you don't mind my writing to you," begins the first e-mail bestselling children's book author Angelica receives from Jack. Surely it can't do any harm to indulge in a mild flirtation. After all, she wouldn't risk her stable marriage and the happiness of her treasured children. But things don't stop at an e-mail, and when Angelica goes to Cape Town for a book tour, her affair with Jack begins in earnest. On their last day together, he makes a stunning confession, and now everything Angelica thought she knew about love and passion, safety and experience, right and wrong are entirely upended once again.

A tender book about the true meaning of love and happily ever after, The Affair is for any woman who has ever looked up from her steady, secure life and secretly wondered "what if . . ."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1439183465
• ISBN13: 9781439183465
• Release Date: June 2010
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.2" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

intriguing character driven relationship tale

In London, Angelica Lariviere lives the perfect life. Her husband Olivier the French banker adores her and their two precocious children love her. On top of that she a popular children's book author with friends who think the world of her and her family. At a dinner party Angelica and Jack Meyer meet. They are instantly attracted to one another flirt seemingly harmlessly until it turns into a heated tryst. They hook up in Capetown, South Africa where she is on a book tour and he owns vineyards. Angelica knows she has complex decisions to make that she puts off until she returns to England where she assesses what she would lose if she pursued passion. This is an intriguing character driven relationship tale in which Angelica as the key protagonist must choose between seemingly tedious comfort and passionate zeal. The support cast is strong especially her family and friends while ironically her lover brings out her passion yet fails to do so with readers even when he provides a stunning revelation. Fans will wonder will Angelica choose her family or her lover as she understands that her personality is radically different with each of them. Harriet Klausner