BLURB taken from Goodreads
In 5 Reasons to Leave a Lover, author Carolyn Moncel offers up a fresh batch of stories based on love and loss. As singer/songwriter, Paul Simon so eloquently suggested in a famous song from the 1970s, there are many ways to leave a lover. However, Moncel's characters demonstrate that the reasons for leaving in the first place are quite finite. Encounters in Paris` Ellery and Julien Roulet return, picking up their lives where the short story, "Pandora`s Box Revisited," ends. This time the Roulets are involved in a love triangle, and along with two other couples, must explore how love relationships are affected and splinter due to abuse, ambivalence, deception, cheating and death. This bittersweet collection of tales proves that some breakups are necessary; while others are voluntary; and still others are simply destined and beyond anyone's control.
I started reading this book the other evening thinking, I'll just read the first story and then finish it off tomorrow etc but I read the whole book start to finish. The first novella deals with Ellery and her husband Julien, I am finding writing this review really hard to do without giving away spoilers, so excuse me if I seem a bit cryptic. I could really identify with Ellery and how she felt betrayed, and thought her vengeance on her husbands possessions were hilarious! I think the way Ellery stops herself from taking revenge on Katrine was also very realistic and showed what a good character Ellery was. she was above sinking so low as to take such a revenge. At the end where Julien and Ellery were talking disappointed me slightly as I wanted her to be an independent, strong women/mother and walk away from him, you know the saying "once a cheat always a cheat". Although we don't really know for sure what Ellery's final decision was, in my mind she rather naively took him back.
The second novella is written so brilliantly, it has you wondering who on earth Cinnamon is! I loved that part. I also enjoyed the way Cinnamon's loyalties changed from Steve to being loyal towards Leah, and how Cinnamon comforted Leah even though Leah had not considered Cinnamon as her "friend"
The last novella is a real tearjerker, an reminded me of my grandparents, how my grandmother died first, and my grandfather died just 8 weeks later of what we all considered a broken heart. In the relationship portrayed in this novella the woman dies first and the man is left to find her. The way he tends to her is heartbreaking but I believe so true of that generation where marriages were for like and not until someone better came along to have an affair with. You sensed their true love and deep respect for each other. You also feel the desolation in the man as the ambulance takes the body of his wife away. I loved how he accepted that her spirit had left already and that the body left behind was just a shell but even so he tended to that body shell so his wife would not have been embarrassed by the state her body was when she died.
I will definitely be looking out for more novellas and full length books by this author.
Available from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk £4.29 on kindle
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