Rising media star and lifestyle blogger Grace Stanton’s own life gets torpedoed after she drives her cheating husband’s pricey sports car straight into the family swimming pool in a fit of anger. Soon she’s locked out of her own palatial home, checking account, and blog, forced to move in with her widowed mother who lives above, and owns, The Sandbar, a rundown beach bar. Attending court-mandated weekly “divorce recovery” therapy sessions with a group of three other women—marital misfits whose only common denominator is betrayal—Grace and the women soon ditch their therapist and move their Wednesday “Ladies’ Night” sessions to The Sandbar. They begin to help each other, walking a fine line between revenge and justice, as each one finds closure in ways previously unimagined. Can Grace figure out a new way home and how strong she needs to be to get there? ( synopsis from Mary Kay Andrews.com)
I started this book on audio and had to switch to the book because it was making me crazy that it was going so slow. Not the story, just listening to it. Once I got the actual book, I really enjoyed the story. My only quibble; for a smart person, the heroine was a bit of a doormat after she caught her hubby Ben "being assisted" by her assistant J’Aime. My aggravation level dropped once she got divorced and had to start rebuilding her life.
Grace loses everything, her husband, blog, and lifestyle after catching her hubby in the act and then destroying his car in a hissy fit (LOL). While she is licking her wounds, he is neatly taking everything away from her and even sabotaging her efforts to recoup her life. She ends up in a touchy feely anger management group with a bunch of other divorced people who had the misfortune of having their cases heard by the same judge. The best part of the story takes place from this point onward as Grace discovers a way to get her self-esteem and even her career back on track. I like that she realizes that she doesn't need all of the expensive and fashionable things which defined her life and even her blog before the divorce. Grace gets back to her essential self and rediscovers the joy in rehabbing a small vintage house not a mcmansion.
She meets Wyatt in her divorce group and they make a real connection after some false starts. He has also been taken for a ride by his ex, but he has a child involved, which makes it worse. The members of the group start to figure out that there is something fishy going on with their so-called therapist and the judge that heard their cases. The ways that the group investigates the situation add some real humor to the book. There are also parts that show just how toxic divorce can really be if the parties don’t work hard to prevent that from happening even after the court hearing is over.
I have to say that Ms. Andrews is a nicer person than I am because I think that Ben and J’Aime don’t suffer enough in the end. But, that is really the lesson that we learn in a divorce. I remember reading in a book something about the anger you keep in your heart leaving less room for love to come in. Grace learns that lesson and is the better person for learning it.
PS… Now that I have read the book, I am going to re-listen to it because the narrator really did a good job. It wasn’t her fault that I was too impatient to wait and enjoy the book.
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