Love and Other Natural Disasters [Paperback]

Holly Shumas (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 2009

Eve is eight months pregnant and in the middle of a Thanksgiving celebration when she discovers that her husband Jonathan has developed an intimate relationship with a woman over the past year. Jonathon asserts his innocence (an affair involves physical intimacy, and he didn't have any), while Eve feels deeply betrayed by the emotional connection he shared with someone else. What Jon has done seems so terrifyingly out of character that Eve finds herself questioning her entire reality. Did she ever really know Jon at all? Was their happiness together a lie? Is emotional intimacy more forgivable than sexual intimacy? And can their marriage survive?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Eve is grateful for the family and friends that surround her Thanksgiving table, including her husband, Jonathon; their five-year-old son, Jacob; and a baby due to make its arrival in a few short weeks. But in this predictable second novel from Shumas (Five Things I Can't Live Without), Eve's idyll gets trashed when a phone call interrupts their holiday dinner and exposes Jonathon's too-cozy friendship with another woman. What turns out to be an emotional affair launches a maelstrom of emotions for both Eve and Jon, neither of whom realized how much their marriage had disintegrated. As they struggle to work things out, they learn a lot about themselves and each other. Throughout the novel, Shumas, a therapist, invites the reader to consider the question—is it cheating if nothing physical happens? Shumas relies heavily on the standard marriage-in-trouble arc (separation, his disheveled bachelor apartment, her ill-fated fling), and readers familiar with the formula will know what to expect. (Jan.)
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Review

For FIVE THINGS I CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT:
"Smart sharply written, and very, very funny. This is a gem of a book."
--Whitney Gaskell, author of PUSHING 30

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: 5 Spot (January 8, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446504777
• ISBN-13: 978-0446504775
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 1 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,460,697 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a writer and a therapist (I never know which of those to put first, but since I'm here on Amazon, I'm going with writer.) I'm also a reader, a basketball fan, a Sagittarius (if you're into that sort of thing), and a lover of the parenthetical aside. My first novel, Five Things I Can't Live Without, was published in July 2007 and my second, Love and Other Natural Disasters, is coming in January 2009. About a woman who's eight months pregnant when she discovers her husband is having an emotional affair, it would make a great book club pick. If you're in the San Francisco area, I'd love to join you for a book club; if you're further away, I'd love to be there by phone. Please visit me over at my website for more information about my books, book clubs, and appearances, and for all the musings I can muster under "Food for Thought." It'd be great to hear from you.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars From S. Krishna's Books, January 18, 2009

By 

skrishna (http://www.skrishnasbooks.com) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Love and Other Natural Disasters (Paperback)

Love and Other Natural Disasters is an incredibly thought-provoking book that will leave the reader pondering long after the novel is finished. It's a great question, especially for those who are in a serious relationship or are married: what constitutes betrayal? Does it have to be physical? Of course it's okay for your partner to have friends of the opposite sex. If there is no physical element, when does that friendship turn into something more? Where is that line? When exactly does it become betrayal? Can emotional straying actually be worse than physical?

These are great questions that are especially relevant in today's computer age. And I have to say, I had some trouble making up my mind as to whether Eve was completely justified in her anger. I don't argue that a relationship doesn't have to be physical; emotional betrayal is completely possible and is a serious issue. But I just wasn't sure how to respond to Jon's betrayal and Eve's response in the novel. Sometimes I thought she was totally justified; other times I felt like she was being cruel and petty. I think this is purposeful on the part of the author. She does a great job demonstrating that there were underlying issues in Jon and Eve's marriage that led to the betrayal. It's no use trying to tackle the betrayal issue if you don't face the other problems as well.

The author is a therapist by day, and it really shows in her characters. They are all well-developed and fully realized, but they aren't perfect. They act like normal humans; when Jon hurts Eve, she lashes out at him. She doesn't mean to be cruel, but it's a standard reaction. I appreciated this in Love and Other Natural Disasters. The conflicts weren't created in order to move the plot along and add length to the book. Instead, it seems like the reader has a window into a real couple acting out a real drama.

The thing I probably liked best about the novel is the end message: it takes two to create a problem in a relationship. I appreciated how Shumas didn't characterize the conflict as one-sided. Yes, Jon was at fault. But so was Eve. It's too easy, especially in chick lit, to blame the man for betrayal and leave it at that. That's not always the case, which Shumas points out in Love and Other Natural Disasters. This book will most likely leave the reader with some mixed feelings, but it will definitely give you something to think about.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Novel Menagerie's Perspective on LOVE AND OTHER NATURAL DISASTERS, March 18, 2009

By 

Sheri "A Novel Menagerie" (California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love and Other Natural Disasters (Paperback)

This novel is about marriage and self-discovery. It is also about taking the people who we love for granted and making assumptions that we know what it is that they desire. Most importantly, this book is about making the decision to love despite the difficulties that life bring which infiltrate into that love.


Eve is a soon-to-be mother of two with just a little over a month left of her pregnancy. She is married to Jon, lives in the Berkeley/San Francisco area in the suburbs with their son, Jacob. On Thanksgiving, her husband receives a call that detained him from returning to the family party. Eve assumes the worse... something with the baby has gone wrong and it was the doctor on the phone. She was right about one thing, something has gone terribly wrong, but it's not the baby. Rather, it's her husband's "other baby" Laney, a hottie from Chicago who Jon has been having an "emotional affair" with for over a year. Of course, Laney is crying in the phone to Jon about her holiday loneliness and he attempts to soothe her. Eve overhears this conversation and eventually the "discussion" between Eve and Jon occurs while others wait at the dinner table. This leads to the abrupt termination of the Thanksgiving Family Feast and Eve giving Jon the boot from the home. While Jon is away at a hotel, Eve cracks into his email account and commences her review of all of the emails between Jon and Laney.


There is a cast of accompanying characters: Tamara her best friend, yet who is connected to Jon via her soon-to-be fiancé; Lil her son's friends mother who is fun, eccentric and sexy; Charlie, her brother; her mother; and her co-worker Dyan. They all play interesting parts in this story in being her sounding board for her relationship woes with her husband. Jon does everything in his power to reunite and correct the wrongs of the past. Eve sabotages him at every corner, including uninviting him to the birth of their daughter Olivia. Despite counseling and all efforts, it seems that nothing will bring this couple back together. I find myself blaming Eve for this more so than Jon.


This book raises questions about fidelity. Which is worse - physical or emotional cheating? It is also about forgiveness and the power that brings to love.


On Sher's "Out of Ten Scale":


This book I could put into the genre: fiction, chick-lit. Was it good? Well, it was an average book, in my opinion. However, it needs to be noted that for an "average" book, it was well written, developed and thought through. I did not get bored of the book or lose interest in the outcome. So, that means that Shumas did give me some nuggets to hold onto while reading the book. I can see how this topic would be hard for some women to read, especially married ones. But, I can say that Shumas is a good writer and I'm glad that I read this book. So, on my scale, I'm going to give this a 7 out of 10.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Emotional nightmare, February 16, 2009

By 

Bethany L. Canfield "Dreadlock Girl" (Corvallis, OR,USA.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love and Other Natural Disasters (Paperback)

Eve, a pregnant wife and mother. She never sees that her life could change from its suburbia, soccer mom state to what she grew up with, father figures who weren't right, a mom who wavered and a family that was being torn apart.

Her husband's emotional affair bubbled to the surface on Thanksgiving day during their afternoon dinner. From then on it was all downhill. She questions every motive and feeling that Jon (her cheat husband) has ever displayed towards her. Has he ever really loved her at all?

Seriously, what did I think? Well...it was kinda like reading a bad dream or a nightmare. I think that may be what the author was aiming for, but it was too much for me. I read it late into the night and then had those scary dreams that start after you have done something horrible and you know it is horrible, but you can't go back and change it. Most of the night I had dreams like that.

To me it seemed that the point Holly Shumas was getting at is that emotional affairs do come with just as many consequences as physical affairs and that our society needs to understand and recognize that. For me though, I believed that already and more than anything now I just get to go though and clear my mind out of all the negativity from Eve and Jon's constant fighting and caos.

I did find the book interesting, I did. It was almost like that TV show that you know you should just quit but you can't because you want to know how they end up. It was too much emotional trauma for me to handle. I live the books I read and because of that I need to be careful with what I read, this was not a great choice for me. All that said, it was intriguing, interesting and suspenseful. I thought that it was well written and insightful as well, now I know more than ever before....that I don't want to ever go there, and that it is much easier than you think to make some poor choices that will impact your whole family.