Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Marriage Matters: A Novel by Cynthia Ellingsen


Marriage Matters: A Novel. Cynthia Ellingsen. Penguin Group (USA). April 2013. 496 pp. pbk. ISBN #: 9780425258002.

June, Kristine and Chloe are three generations of a feisty family who know what they want, at least up to this point.  Each of their lives is about to be overturned, forcing new decisions that are more carefully arrived at and threatening to totally divide them or unite them more deeply than ever before!  What a journey!

June is a great gardener, that is until her neighbor Charley puts up a glaring gazebo that starts a huge fight between the two neighbors. Add to that all June’s female friends think Charlie is “hot.”  How will their growing animosity develop or at least how could a neighborly compromise emerge?  Where will it go?

Kristine and Kevin have been married a long time and now Kristine is wondering if the best of their life together has passed forever.  Kevin travels constantly and is exhausted and depleted when home. After winning a trip with one of her employees, she realizes that her marriage is on the rocks.  Will Kristine call it quits and what should she do or not do?  This part of the story undergoes several surprising twists and turns that make the reader flip those pages furiously to see what happens next.

Chloe is just too busy to think about romance.  She’s working on an art therapy degree and is just about to blow it when a run-in with a very rude professor turns into something else.  Is this really it? Or not?  Is she destined to remain single or is the love of her life closer than she can see?

Various stages of romance and lack of same swing back and forth in the always fascinating pages of this funny, frustrating and tender story.  Cynthia Ellingsen knows what lurks within the hearts and minds of every woman and the men who all too often don’t have a clue.  Marriage Matters: A Novel leaves the reader questioning, reading, laughing and loving it all – nicely done, Cynthia Ellingsen!

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