There is a lot going on in Beatriz Williams' Husbands & Lovers. And while each individual plotline was very interesting, I feel like there was just so much to keep track of, and the constant back-and-forth between past and present left me feeling disconnected. Like, which story is the main story?
[CAUTION: POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERTS AHEAD]
Essentially, the novel begins with Mallory's son, Sam, getting into some health trouble and needing a new kidney. If you think the novel is going to be all about that, you're kind of wrong.
Needing a new kidney leads us to learn about Sam's biological father, Monk Adams, who is a famous musician. If only Mallory would tell Monk about Sam, then maybe Sam could be a kidney match.
But Mallory doesn't want to tell Monk because it's been 14 years, and there's something else that happened that takes the whole book to finally be revealed. And anyway, Monk is getting married to an influencer, so there's no reason to rain on that parade.
In the meantime, Mallory and her sister, Paige, discover that their mom was adopted, which leads them to travel to Ireland to find out more about their mom's birth parents.
While Mallory and Paige don't know much about where their mom came from, the reader is privy to such information through flashbacks that take us to Egypt in 1951, where a woman named Hannah and her husband are living because her husband is some hoity-toity something-or-other with the British government. Anyway, Hannah begins an affair with a hotelier, and I bet you can guess now who the birth parents are.
Phew. That's a lot, right?
I thought it was hard to go back and forth so much, and honestly, the Hannah storyline was interesting, but I didn't feel like it added much. Perhaps if the book had simply been about Mallory and her sister doing the Ancestry.com thing, then maybe I wouldn't have felt like Hannah didn't belong. There were some interesting parallels between Hannah's story and Mallory's story, so there could be some good book discussion there if you read this with a book club.
But overall, I liked the Mallory/Monk storyline the best. There was enough with just the two of them - and a few other minor plot points - to carry the book along. Despite all the odds, I found myself rooting for the two of them the whole time. (And I thought the thing with Serge Peabody was a little out of left field. Like, she just starts making out with him after meeting him once? Ohhhhkaaaaaay.)
Husbands & Lovers is published by Ballantine Books and is available to purchase now. I received an e-ARC in exchange for this review.
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