Buying Options

Read for Free

OR

Kindle Price: $2.99

You've subscribed to ! We will preorder your items within 24 hours of when they become available. When new books are released, we'll charge your default payment method for the lowest price available during the pre-order period.

Update your device or payment method, cancel individual pre-orders or your subscription at
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

There was an error. We were unable to process your subscription due to an error. Please refresh and try again.

Follow the Author

Kevin Brennan

Occasional Soulmates Kindle Edition

by Kevin Brennan (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

33 ratings

See all formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$2.99

—

Paperback

"Please retry"

$6.99

$8.07

Kindle
$0.00 Read with Kindle Unlimited to also enjoy access to over 3 million more titles $2.99 to buy
Paperback
$6.99

2 Used from $8.07 1 New from $6.99

When the thirty-eight-year-old San Francisco doctor meets her new patient, a handsome British expat with the unlikely name of Dylan Cakebread (and an uncanny resemblance to Jude Law), she’s convinced it’s the start of her own relationship novel. He’s an architect, no less -- always a key piece of her most indulgent fantasies -- and the heroine of a relationship novel always gets her fantasy man, right? Though their shaky start raises red flags that her oldest girlfriend, Jules, is quick to point out, Sarah can’t help it. She falls hard for Dylan and it appears to be a two-way street.

But maybe meeting your perfect mate in the exam room isn’t the best opening act. Sarah thinks she’s the cure for what ails him, but soon she learns the secret Dylan has been keeping from her. Now she has to choose between happiness and the illusion of it -- if Dylan doesn’t take the choice out of her hands first.

It’s starting to look like this isn’t her relationship novel at all: it’s his.

Print length

260 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

September 13, 2014
File size

1531 KB
Page Flip

Enabled
Word Wise

Enabled
Enhanced typesetting

Enabled
See all details

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Kevin Brennan is the author of Parts Unknown, Yesterday Road, and Our Children Are Not Our Children. He lives with his wife and critters in Northern California, with plans to retreat to the Sierra foothills and cavort with the oaks and pines someday soon. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00NKO0B2A
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 13, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1531 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 260 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #2,919,790 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,423 in Single Women Fiction
- #10,570 in Women's Literary Fiction
- #24,130 in Contemporary Literary Fiction

Customer Reviews:
33 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

Kevin Brennan

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Kevin Brennan, author of Parts Unknown (William Morrow) has rung in the new year in Red Square, performed as a busker in the London Underground, wandered the California desert, and auditioned unsuccessfully for a chance at stardom on reality television. He and his wife live in Northern California.

Historical Novel Society

[In Town Father] Brennan does a wonderful job of bringing this off-kilter utopia to life in a narrative that is both highly entertaining and genuinely moving.

Booklist

Brennan intricately interweaves several interrelated stories into a lyrical testament to life, love, and redemption. A powerful debut novel from an exciting new talent.

San Francisco Chronicle

A literary storyteller with enormous versatility - poetic and starkly realistic, able to drift among various voices and various moments seamlessly. Add Parts Unknown to the oeuvre of California stories that should transcend the state's borders.

Denver Post

[Parts Unknown] roasts the old chestnut that male writers cannot convincingly tell stories from female perspectives. Brennan does it with grace, wit, and beauty.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

33 global ratings

5 star		46%
4 star		43%
3 star 0% (0%)		0%
2 star		8%
1 star		4%

How customer reviews and ratings work

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Phillip McCollum

So this is the end of my relationship novel.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on July 6, 2015

Verified Purchase

Due to its self-aware writing style, Occasional Soulmates might be called a metanovel. Immediately, this may turn off some readers, but for me, it’s one of the reasons I love Kevin Brennan. He’s an author that can take traditional tropes and make them interesting again.

Dr. Rachel Phelan is a single, thirtysomething looking to come out a winner in her own living “relationship novel.” She’s seeking a long-term commitment, only to find herself falling in love with a damaged man. That’s where the ride begins and through Brennan's deft prose, holds reader interested until the final page.

I feel one of the best compliments I can give Occasional Soulmates is that not once did I see a man trying to write from a woman’s perspective. If I had not known that the author was male, I would have assumed the opposite. In fact, during parts of my reading, I would get so sucked into the story that a part of my brain was telling me that a woman had written this. Not that I’m a perfect judge, given my plumbing, but Rachel seemed to embody a lot of the natural strengths and passions that the women in my life appear to have. Dr. Rachel Phelan was not some overcompensating man-in-a-woman’s-body nor a hyperemotional ninny--she was a capable woman looking to fill a hole in her life.

For me, Brennan’s only misfire was an unsympathetic love interest. Dylan comes off selfish and brooding. Maybe that was the goal, and if so, bravo Mr. Brennan! Still, I left this novel with a slightly bitter taste in my mouth and couldn’t help but feel Rachel didn’t just do okay in the end--she dodged a walking piece of British C4.

Admittedly, I went into Occasional Soulmates with some loaded expectations. I’d read one of Brennan’s books before (the fantastic Yesterday Road) so I knew I’d be surprised and pleased. This wasn’t going to be the “traditional relationship novel” and I felt I could count on the author to give me something new and different. Suffice it to say, I was not let down and once again, I look forward to the author’s next work.

Helpful

Marie Ann Bailey

A Page-Turner Story With Depth!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 18, 2014

Verified Purchase

Caveat: This review is based on an Advanced Reading Copy of Occasional Soulmates. I loved it so much I bought the paperback version.

Kevin Brennan's latest novel, Occasional Soulmates, is a humorous and sometimes tragic adult coming of age novel. Written in the first person, the protagonist, 38-year-old doctor Sarah Phelan, is obsessed with finishing the "relationship novel" of her life: finding Mr. Right (or Mr. Anybody Who Will Love Me Enough To Marry Me) and settling down. Sarah has been married once before but she would argue the failure of that marriage was not her fault. Yes, she says, she's a doctor, but she's not "cocky," she's not hard to get along with: "These men ought to just relax. I'm not going to castrate them." Sarah doesn't have a clue. She's "too quirky," according to her best friend Jules (whose relationship novel, by the way, came out before Sarah's). For one thing, Sarah uses a Land of the Giants lunchbox as a purse, and she keeps "two pillows on the bed" just in case her relationship shows up unexpectedly.

Enter Dylan Cakebread, a thirty-something British architect who bares an uncanny resemblance to Jude Law. Their meeting, in Sarah's exam room because Dylan is quite ill at the time, is the stuff of relationship novels: A chance and awkward meeting where both seem to feel the ignition of attraction. But Sarah will not leave anything to chance and, in effect, she pursues Dylan, crating opportunities for them to "accidentally" cross paths.

Dylan is attracted to Sarah, and they soon embark on a heady relationship, full of good food and lots of great sex. But Dylan is a mysterious man, and it's not long before Sarah realizes that he is also not always truthful. When she eventually learns what he is keeping from her, she refuses to give him up, believing her unconditional love for him should result in everlasting happiness.

The reader quickly comes to care about Sarah because she is a caring individual. That's why she's a doctor. She wants to help even when the object of her aid, for example, her bitter, older sister Ella, seems to have nothing but jealousy and disdain for her. The disdain is mutual, but Sarah is at heart someone who wants to make things right. The problem is she doesn't always do the right thing to make things right. She tries to follow the outline of her relationship novel, not realizing that other people, such as Dylan, might have their own relationship novel, one with a different outline. She doesn't realize until very late that she may only be a secondary character in his relationship novel.

As with Mr. Brennan's previous novels--Parts Unknown and Yesterday Road--this novel has many layers which slowly peel away in the reader's mind after long it is finished. On the one hand, this novel is a page-turner. The reader wants to know (has to know) what Dylan is hiding and then whether Sarah can reconcile his secrets with her own desire for a life with him. On the other hand, the ending, which seems like a surprise but really isn't once you think about it, sets the reader on a mission to find all the clues, hints, and asides that pointed to this conclusion. Days after finishing this novel, I was still musing about the twists and turns of Sarah and Dylan's relationship, still having "Aha!" moments when I peeled back another layer and saw even more clearly the disaster ahead.

One of the (many) things I love about Mr. Brennan's stories is that every character he develops has humanity. They are not one- or two-dimensional characters that you can consume like so many M&Ms. Even Ella, the bitter older sister, is someone who eventually tugs at the reader's heart. Everyone has a story, and no one is undeserving of the reader's sympathy.

Occasional Soulmates has Mr. Brennan's notable humor, a sympathetic wit that runs deep like a humming submarine. It is this humor and Mr. Brennan's spot-on assessment of humanity that makes his novels stand out. His characters get under your skin and into your heart. His stories make you rethink your own. I highly recommend this novel. If you want a fast-paced relationship novel, you won't be disappointed. Occasional Soulmates would be a good airport read. If you want something deeper, a novel that will make you reflect on relationships in general, how our wants get in the way of our needs, then look no further than Occasional Soulmates. The story, the writing, will stay with you long after you get off the plane.

Helpful

Top reviews from other countries

Mr Dylan S Hearn

An intelligent romance with a lot of heart

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 29, 2015

Verified Purchase

Kevin Brennan wrote one of my favourite books I read last year, Yesterday Road, a warm-hearted tale of memory and discovery. With Occasional Soulmates, Brennan has put his own twist on the chick-lit genre, gently subverting the standard tropes while respecting the genre and its audience.

The book is written from the point of view of Sarah Phelan, a doctor who has almost given up on finding the perfect man when he arrives in her waiting room. Smart, handsome - a Jude Law look-a-like - and an architect to boot, Dylan Cakebread appears to be the man of her dreams, yet as their relationship develops Sarah learns that Dylan Cakebread isn't the person she thought he was, in fact she realises she doesn't really know him at all.
Written in the first person, Brennan effortlessly draws us into the mind of Dr Phelan. She's smart, funny, engaging, but not without the odd neurosis or two, in fact the perfect protagonist for this type of tale. As she stumbled through the early awkwardness of a new relationship, I couldn't help but warm to her. There were no false notes, no plot-led decisions - instead Brennan has built a credible and compelling story on character alone. And the support cast are equally as compelling, especially Phelan's relationship with her mother and her sister.

In the portrayal of Dylan Cakebread, Brennan has managed to capture a particular type of english reserve very well indeed. There were a few missteps regarding slang, and his brother was probably the least rounded of all the book's cast, but the mystery of who Dylan Cakebread really is played out very well and held my interest throughout.

Throughout the book, Brennan - through the narration of Sarah - often refers back to a the different stages of a relationship novel, and while I enjoyed the conceit it occasionally came across as a little too knowing. That said, it is a beautifully written book and I enjoyed it very much indeed.

If you are looking for an intelligent romance with a lot of heart, then this is the book for you. Recommended.

Kats

Intelligent romantic fiction

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 5, 2015

Verified Purchase

I discovered Kevin Brennan through another novel, Yesterday Road, which is one of the best novels I've read this year. I didn't enjoy Occasional Soulmates quite as much but it came close. Divorced doctor Sarah is in her late thirties and meets a man she believes to be perfect. But as Sarah plots her own 'relationship novel', with a healthy dose of cynicism and humour, the reader cannot stop turning the pages to find out what dark secret the wonderful Jude Law lookalike is hiding. Sarah and best friend Jules are smart and likeable. But the most important relationship that needs to be resolved in this story is that between Sarah and her sister. This is much more than romantic fiction; it's written with a wit and intelligence that is rare in this genre. It's also hard to believe this novel is written by a man; Kevin Brennan writes utterly convincingly from a woman's point of view. My only criticism is he's that less convincing at portraying English characters: our romantic hero Dylan and his brother Steve are Londoners but their dialogue doesn't always hit the mark. But it's a minor point in what is otherwise an excellent novel. Kevin Brennan writes fluently and with great skill, and I look forward to reading more of his novels.

Audrey Driscoll

Anatomy of a Relationship

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on January 9, 2020

Verified Purchase

The most striking thing about this book is that its author is a guy. Either Mr. Brennan is a mind-reader or he had really good intel from women. I loved the girly-gossipy tone of the narration, especially the parts where Sarah and her best pal Jules dissect relationships and classify men. I appreciated the development of Sarah's relationship with Dylan, anticipating some aspects and being surprised by others. I really liked the presentation of San Francisco and environs as a setting -- scenery, streetscapes, restaurants, food, wine. Lots of food and wine. The only thing that didn't quite work for me was Sarah stepping out of the story to present it as a "relationship novel." It didn't spoil the story for me, but didn't really add anything useful either. In fact, seeing that term in the first sentence sort of told me how the book would end. Not the actual ending, of course, just the nature of it. But it was still an engaging, entertaining, and ultimately compelling read.

Buying Options

OR

Buy for others

Buying and sending eBooks to others

Follow the Author

Occasional Soulmates Kindle Edition

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Product details

Videos

About the author

Kevin Brennan

Customer reviews

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.

Top reviews from other countries