An intense romance…
Alexander’s passionate romance, the first installment in the Anatomy of An Affair Series which tells the story of a woman who falls in love with her husband’s best friend, is a soaring love story marked by well-paced narrative and poignant emotions. Lily Wentworth, daughter of a rock legend, a wife, and a mother, finds herself passionately in love with the intense Kyle O’Reilly, a high school teacher and her husband’s best friend. Things take a dark turn when Kyle’s unhealthy obsession for Lily becomes too much to bear. The short, and yet intense affair takes Lily on a whirlwind journey of passion, lies, deceptions, and endless moments of torments as she struggles to come to terms with her own ability to betray. Alexander’s prose is elegant and her writing tender and yet determinedly unpretentious. Lily is by no means perfect; while not expecting others to judge her (as a narrator, she asks of this from her readers in the beginning), she herself is quick to jump to conclusions and judges her father, Nick, and Nigel’s well-placed intentions cruelly. But despite her imperfections, she is a likable character. Alexander gives her a fierceness and allure that let the reader become as entranced with her as the men in her life do. Lily, as the main protagonist, stays at the heart of the book, but the book has a splendidly drawn cast in other characters as well: the dependable Nick, Lily’s Detective husband, who with all of his sensitivity and gentleness cannot make Lily fall in love with him; Lily’s legendry Rockstar father, broken by the loss of his wife in an accident from which he himself survived; the charming Nigel “NJ” Bennings, Jr, the man who cannot help but love Lily despite everything: Colleen, the neglected wife of Kyle and a woman who touches readers’ hearts despite remaining in shadows; and the self-centered Kyle O’Reilly, Lily’s deeply troubled lover, who is ruined by his past. The first-person account is paced smoothly, and as the narrator, Lily is both reliable and candid. The affair is portrayed with poignant grace, and the book plunges the reader into a story that seems to be an ordinary journey through life rather than an easy thrill ride. This tale of a woman’s emotionally charged road to introspection makes for an engrossing read and will stay with readers long after they finish the book.
