THE MARRIAGE DIARIES

Author: Rebecca Campbell ISBN: 0345485882 10/2006 CHICK LIT Publisher: BALLANTINE

Savvy and sophisticated Celeste is a top clothing buyer in London: Sean is a scruffy, eccentric writer turned at-home dad who, courtesy of the couple's toddler, has mastered the art of changing stinky diapers. Needing to be seen (if only by himself) as more than just a drool-spattered Mr. Mom, Sean begins a hilarious journal detailing the ridiculous, wondrous, and sometimes salacious aspects of being a house husband—including such juicy tidbits as his growing attraction to the beautiful Uma Thursday, a single mother from his son's play group. But when Celeste stumbles upon Sean's secret entries, she's dismayed to discover she's opened a Pandora's box on her marriage. Hardly the kind of girl to take a straying husband lying down, she devises a scheme of her own, and the twin strands of the will-they-won't-they plot become ever more entangled. Can love trump lust? Can fidelity conquer passion? Or will the destructive forces of untrammeled desire wreck what may just be, for all its faults, the perfect marriage?

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

I really dislike having to give out a negative review. I always try to find something positive about the book in question and focus on that. Unfortunately, in Rebecca Campbell's THE MARRIAGE DIARIES, there is nothing positive to focus on.

THE MARRIAGE DIARIES is about Celeste and Sean, a married couple with a young son, going through the proverbial seven-year-itch. Sean is a stay-at-home dad, while Celeste is the full-time working woman. Celeste has made it known, just not to her husband, that she is not satisfied with her sex life. Sean is very much attracted to a single mother from his son's playgroup.

Celeste ends up finding and reading Sean's private computer journal and finds out about this other woman. Each of them questions their own fidelity and one of them acts against it.

I found the story boring, as it was told through Sean and Celeste's personal computer journals. Sean and Celeste were one-dimensional characters. Even the secondary characters lacked emotion. I struggled through most of this book to find that the ending was anything short of a real ending.

I would pass on reading Rebecca Campbell's THE MARRIAGE DIARIES.

Julie Kornhausl