Tuesday, May 17, 2016

The Marriage Pact by M.J. Pullen

Marci Thompson always knew what life would be like by her thirtieth birthday. A large but cozy suburban home shared with a charming husband and two brilliant children. A celebrated career as a writer, complete with mahogany shelves and a summer book tour. A life full of adventure with her friends and family by her side.

Instead, Marci lives alone in 480 square feet of converted motel space next to a punk rock band, hundreds of miles from her friends and family. She works in a temporary accounting assignment that has somehow stretched from two weeks into nine months. And the only bright spot in her life, not to mention the only sex she's had in two years, is an illicit affair with her married boss, Doug.

Thirty is not at all what it is cracked up to be.

Then the reappearance of an old friend with whom she had made a drunken marriage pact ten years earlier opens a long-forgotten door, and the lines between right and wrong, heartache and happiness are all about to get very blurry, as Marci faces the most difficult choices of her life.


REVIEW:
This should really be a 2.5 star review which is rather disappointing. Though this book was well-written, the heroine was just to unlikable to carry the story. Marci was stuck in a dead end job and a dead end relationship with her boss, and yet somehow just thought everything would somehow resolve itself without any work on her part. Then an old friend swoops in to carry her away and she seemingly falls into another relationship without actually making any attempt to address the problems in her life? I found her too frustrating to wish her well, and didn't like that she saw herself as a victim rather than an active participant in her life. It wasn't until the very end that I found anything redeemable in Marci, and that was just too late. I never understood the attraction to Doug, and I thought Jake deserved better than his relationship with Marci, but again it seemed like he had put no real thought into that either. All in all, a rather aggravating read for me.