3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Was quite a struggle to get through, March 12, 2006
The back cover makes this book sound like an entirely different book than it actually is. Whoever wrote the synopsis for the back cover should be fired because it sounds nothing like the book that I read, except for maybe one or two things that did happen in the book. It makes it sound like it's mainly about two sisters but it's actually about one sister and her sexual exploits with a hot guy and another sister thrown in every 10 pages or so.
Martha is the main character in here. We get to read how perfect she and her life is for a little while. Then her husband leaves her and the whining about that goes on for quite a long time. Nothing interesting happens in that time except for Martha falling apart. Then Martha goes to a salsa club and meets Jack. Then the mind-blowing sex they have is written in every detail several times. In some ways, I have a hard time believing that Martha is the best mother, like Adele Parks wants us to believe. I mean, it seems Martha is out every night with Jack and when they're not out at different places, then they're having sex all over Martha's house with Martha's two children and Martha's sister in the house. Of course we have a couple scenes thrown in so we think Martha is just the best.
We also have what seems to be the same phone conversations between Martha and her ex husband, Michael. Those conversations consist of Martha whining and asking why he left and Michael is always distant and snobby. It got to be old really fast. Yet another thing that kept on repeating was the conversation between Eliza and Martha, in which Eliza would say how Jack was just going to break Martha's heart and Martha going on and on about how he makes her feel young and she won't fall in love with him and just how he's the perfect guy. I wish whoever edited this book would have cut some of those conversations out because it was just the same thing over and over and the reader only needs to read it once to get how Eliza stands about Jack.
I really didn't care for the character of Martha, if you couldn't tell already. At first, she just seems too rigid and then after Jack, she acts like a teenager even though she still has responsibities. There was just nothing for me to connect with and therefore I didn't root for her at all. The book also goes on and on about how she feels and after awhile, I just started to scan the pages until I found anything semi-interesting to read.
Eliza, the other sister, gets very little space in this book. It's almost like her story is an afterthought. In the beginning she is shown as the wild child of the two sisters. But then Eliza decides it's time to grow up and so she dumps the guy who she feels is to immature for her. The rest of the book, Eliza is pretty much the baby-sitter to Martha's children and the person Adele Parks' puts in when she needs someone to argue with Martha. Before and when there's a lull in Martha's sexploits, Eliza goes on a few dates but the men she goes out with are all wrong. There's really no middle to Eliza's story-just a beginning and an end.
I would not recommend this book to anyone. "In her shoes" is a much better book about the relations between sisters. "Lust for life" or "The other woman's shoes" as it was published in the UK, is just a wannabe compared to Jennifer Weiner's "In her shoes". I also have "Larger than Life" by Adele Parks, which I haven't read yet but I'm hoping it's quite a bit better than "Lust for Life".
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Predictable and dull, March 5, 2006
This book had me scratching my head, wondering how it got published. There was nothing to sustain it for the first two hundred pages apart from two events, Eliza leaves her lover and her sister Martha gets dumped by her husband. So I waded through that bit hoping for something a bit more interesting than descriptions of Martha cleaning up after the kids and drinking her woes away and Eliza going on dull dates with dull men.
But the only thing that happened after that was that Martha met a two dimensional prat called Jack who had a big penis and that apparently was the cure all for being heartbroken. After that I stopped reading, because frankly I was bored. Sorry Adele, your characters are about as believable as those in a day time soap.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
unrealistic and depressing, August 7, 2010
Ok, I realize novels aren't necessarily realistic. And perfect-looking marriages do break up unexpectedly and for no apparent reason. But how often does a perfect, gorgeous man willing to take on a divorcee and her two small children show up immediately? Even if it happens, it's not interesting. Even worse is the other sister's dilemma... she wants a mature responsible husband instead of her flighty Peter Pan boyfriend. In the end she gives up and settles for the boyfriend, who has not changed at all. She apparently needs more self-esteem or she would not accept the unacceptable. Does anyone learn or grow in this book? It seems Martha doesn't have to, and Eliza just regresses. A depressing book, which doesn't ring true to real life.
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