Customer Reviews

Wives Behaving Badly

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

While this book is written from Minty's point of view, Buchan brings to the fore all the feelings of the various people that were affected by the second marriage. You feel the anger radiating from Rose's adult children. Rose and Minty maintain their icy relationship, and family friends have mixed loyalties. Rose's successful career and personal happiness assure the reader that there can be life after divorce. Nathan seems to be drowning in the turmoil created by his two families and appears to regret having created a second family to support and is often worn out by the demands of being a 54 year old father of 7 year old twins.

Love, anger, hurt and sadness are interwoven in a realistic and difficult second marriage. It is hard to be a second wife to Rose. As Minty matures, she begins to understand how she actually broke up Nathan's first family and will never replace Rosé. It is this maturity that helps the reader to feel compassion for Minty. While you "Can't go back", and undo the past, you can make the best of a difficult situation. And things do get very difficult! A very satisfying read.

This sequel to "Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman" gives us a look at the "other woman," Minty Lloyd, 7 or so years after she stole Nathan, her friend and colleague's husband. That friend and colleague, Rose, was someone to greatly admire in the first book, as she reeled from the blow but handled her pain and anguish with grace and strength, and prepared to move on with her life.

We didn't know too much about Minty in that book, other than from Rose's point of view, and frankly, there was little to like. How could there be?

Now we see life from Minty's point of view. She is now the mother of twin boys, Felix and Lucas, and an unhappy wife, unhappy mother, unhappy woman and VERY VERY hard to like. Her boys are a drain on her. Her husband is a drain on her. Even her au pair, Eve, is a drain on her. She is working part time but wants to leave her boys, against Nathan's wishes, to work full time. She is miserable and whiny and so awful that it was hard to even turn the pages. Was this on purpose, or was there something the author wanted me to see that I missed?

Anyway, as another reviewer so aptly pointed out, Minty whines her way through her life, unspeakably hard and even cruel, in my mind, to her husband, and even her children on a different level, although she loves them. Then tragedy hits.

The second half of the book is the forced interaction between Rose and Minty, Rose's adult children, Poppy and Sam and their respective spouses, Minty's loyal (or maybe not) friends, and other interesting characters. But it is Rose and Minty who must finish the dance Minty started when she stole Nathan, and for the life of me, I found it hard to care.

This book is well-written, as are all of Buchan's books, but very hard going and a difficult read. It is somewhat interesting as a sequel, but not enough to have to struggle with the main character. Minty is supposedly redeemed in the end, but by that time I was so heartily sick of her, I didn't care.

I loved Rose in "Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman" and was looking forward to reading more about her. However, Rose doesn't put in an appearance until almost halfway through this book. It's all about Minty, the second wife. I found this book disappointing and light on the plot that the first book had.

All who cheered for Rose, the wife who was usurped by a young mistress, Minty, in Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman will undoubtedly want hear Wives Behaving Badly in order to follow the fortunes of these women and, of course, Nathan, ex husband to one and now husband to another.

It's an interesting scenario Elizabeth Buchan has crafted. There are jillions of stories about the fate of mistresses but few follow a mistress who becomes a wife.

At first, Minty was ecstatic at the thought of actually becoming Nathan's wife. But, for her, matrimony isn't the exact bed of roses that she had anticipated. It is now some seven years later and the joys of parenting their twin boys aren't quite as pronounced as they once were. (This feeling is exacerbated after Minty takes a sneak peek at Nathan's diary). Perhaps this is because Nathan's job is at a bit of a standstill and, after all, he does have two grown children from his first marriage, Poppy and Sam. Poppy doesn't care for her stepmother one little bit and she's not shy about showing it.

On the other hand Rose has really blossomed. She's now a successful travel writer with TV appearances to her credit. Just how Minty copes with life not turning out as she had once planned is what this story is all about. Don't expect Wives Behaving Badly to deserve the subtitle Rose's Revenge because Buchan has a few surprises in store.

Ably read by classically trained actress Justine Eyre, this is a fresh look at what could happen the second time around.

- Gail Cooke

No, this book wasn't as good as "Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman" but what I think this book has too is a true connection to the way people really act and are - it is definitely not a part of the "chick-lit" that is popular and which the title may suggest. As a woman long married and about the age of Rose (the wronged wife), I felt that her reactions to the younger woman who stole her husband are realistic - I think she and the second wife behave like real people might - the dialogue seems natural and heart breaking at times - all factors that made me like the book.

In the second half of the book when the young wife begins to question her actions of taking a man away from his wife and children, I became fully engaged in reading the book. If you want to read something different from any other book you've read, then give this book a chance.

I like Elizabeth Buchan's incisive yet gently writing style and her sharp characterizations, but I had a few problems with this novel. First, Minty seems too different from her character in Revenge of the Middle Aged Woman. Second, there was little plot in this book, so the narratve had to be very character-driven, but without strong characters, it went almost nowhere. The wives in question did not behave badly at all, under the circumstances of the one "big event" of the plot. But then again, there was not much revenge in the first book so maybe this author's book's titles are wildly exaggerated to hint at things more exciting than they really are. She does have a really nice eye for detail, and for the ups and downs of modern life, marriage, and childrearing. but can a person like MInty, who was so shallow in the first book, truly become so transformed in six years?

I shouldn't have expected much as I didn't fall in love with Buchan's previous "Revenge" book. But I was still disappointed with this novel. Minty was impossible to empathize with, and most of the other characters generated a similar feeling of apathy, if not downright antipathy.

A drawn-out tale of just rewards.

Not having read the prequel to this book, I'm taking it simply as it appears and have quite enjoyed it. Minty Lloyd was "The other woman" in her husband Nathan's previous marriage, younger and better looking than his wife Rose. Several years and 6 year old twin boys have happened and, as a young mother, frazzled and worn out with looking after the boys and Nathan, Minty feels that life is passing her by at an alarming rate. Still not accepted by Nathan's friends, and facing constant antagonism from Nathan's grown up children, Minty discovers that Nathan and Rose have kept up a close friendship and grows more jealous as time passes. She also feels that Nathan doesn't give her his total support in the face of his children's constant sniping at her. This is a story with which any woman who has ever been in the role of second (or third) wife can empathise and perhaps even recognise herself in being perceived as the marriage wrecker.

i enjoyed Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman, cheering for Rose all the way through the book. I didn't think alot about Nathan or Minty. In this book I still did not like Minty. She was too full of self pity in that she had made her bed but didn't want to lay in it.Even though I though that Nathan deserved some of what he got, I still felt sorry for him a big part of the time.
This book left me with too many unanswered question. Did Paige and Martin work out their problems? Did Richard find out about Polly's gambling/I hope he did and gave her ####, she was spoiled rotten. Did Jilly go to the U.S with Sam. I guess I like complete closure in my books and this didn't satisfy that need.

How many seven year olds would say 'naughty,naughty daddy ???' The children in this book spoke like toddlers in their dialogue sequences. I had to check back to make sure they were seven ! Awful....ruined the voice of the book for me overall.