From reading the blurb I thought this was going to be a pretty straightforward novel about two people having an affair behind people's backs. I imagined it something a little like The Way We Were by Elizabeth Noble, which I read last year and was generally unimpressed by. I expected this one would be perhaps a similar story but better written - mainly because the cover looked more serious and less pink.
I was, however, pleasantly surprised. Far from being a tale of illicit love, this was not a love story at all in my opinion. It was a story about passion and desire and danger and excitement and deep feelings and tragedy - but not love. It was essentially a Wuthering Heights set in twentieth century Maine - and anybody who knows me should know that has to be a good thing.
April and Oliver could both have been pretty unsympathetic characters. April was a disaster zone from the word go: falling in and out of unsuitable and abusive relationships, with a dead-end job and living her life from crisis to crisis, she was basically everybody's worst nightmare. In contrast, Oliver seemed to have it all going for him, with his picture-perfect fiancé, high-flying job and big happy family. This would all have made him very easy to hate. Yet Callahan has somehow made both of them endearing and somehow I ended up rooting for them to overcome all their differences and difficulties and be together - even if it screwed over Oliver's fiancé who was perfectly lovely.
The beauty of this book was how truthful it was with regard to emotions and how things really would happen in these circumstances. There was no sugar-coating or sanitising things; this was love and passion in the real world. In this respect, it was less extreme than Bronte's classic, and despite my deep love for that novel, April and Oliver was none the worse off for avoiding becoming too mawkish.
A generally good read.
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