I received an ARC of the marriage mender by Linda Green in return for an honest review through NetGalley. Thank you so much to the author, publishers and NetGalley for allowing me to do so.
The novel is centred around – yep you got it! – a marriage mender. Alison’s job is to help other couples, to make them understand each other better, to help them to solve their problems, to help them fall in love again, or at least remember what they loved about each other in the first place. She is married to Chris and they have a daughter, a nine-year-old Matilda, who has a very endearing quality of asking the wrong thing at the wrong time and saying exactly what everyone else is thinking but is too afraid to say anything. They are also raising Josh, Chris’s son from his first relationship. Everything looks brilliant, till the day when Chris’s ex Lydia re-appears and wants to renew contact with Josh, who she walked out on when he was a baby. Chris can’t forget her for this, and doesn’t want anything to do with her but leaves the decision up to Josh.
In terms of the protagonist, Alison, she was exceptional at her job as a counsellor and took aspects of this out of the office and into everyday life. It was very easy to warm to her as a character yet at times I found myself frustrated by her and wanted to shout at her to stop being so understanding and to think of her own feelings. In spite of that though I fell in love with her and admired her ability to keep cool in a crisis, even those that were hurting herself and her loved ones.
I totally enjoyed reading about Alison’s clients, they were like a breath of fresh air to the story and made the book much more interesting. It also happened that one couple that Alison was counselling is going to be much more significant than I have supposed and although it was quite a longshot to be reality, I still enjoyed seeing the two stories intertwining and enfolding.
I did sadly have some negatives about this book but they were by no means big things nor did they take away from the story in the slightest.
The first negative is that I could not get my head around the secrets within the family and how Chris could have kept some of the biggest parts about himself from the woman he loves. It all becomes clear in the end what happened and why he kept it from her but for some reason that just didn’t resonate with me.
The second negative was that in between each chapter in italics were extracts that didn’t really have any meaning. I was unsure whether they related to a character in the story (although I don’t think this is the case), or whether they were counselling extracts. Either way they didn’t add anything to the story and I just felt confused by them.
The third negative is the ending which kind of just ended abruptly and felt a bit rushed and left me feeling slightly deflated.
Overall, I adored this novel and in my opinion Linda Green is an amazing author who has never disappointed me yet. The story deals with issues that many people encounter and deal with throughout their life and it was handled brilliantly. It was written in an engaging way and I couldn’t put the book down. This has definitely been one of my favourite books of the year so far. A great 5 star read that I cannot recommend enough.
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