Slip of the Tongue by Jessica Hawkins

Blurb: Sadie Hunt isn’t perfect—but her husband is. Nathan Hunt has her coffee waiting every morning. He holds her hand until the last second. He worships the Manhattan sidewalk she walks on. Until one day, he just…stops. And Sadie finds herself in the last place she ever expected to be. Lonely in her marriage.

When rugged and sexy Finn Cohen moves into the apartment across the hall, he and Sadie share an immediate spark. Finn reveals dreams for a different life. Sadie wants to save her marriage. Their secrets should keep them apart, not ignite a blistering affair. But while Sadie’s marriage runs colder by the day, she and Finn burn hotter.  Her husband doesn’t want her anymore.
The man next door would give up everything to have her.

5 Stars

So cheating…..Some people can’t read it.  It’s not really a trigger for me, although I never read any books that had marital cheating in them before now.  And I gotta say…

This is a phenomenal book! It easily goes into my top ten in this genre.  This book really twisted me up, like a lot.  For me that was the hardest part to read when they had a break down in communication.  To see from the outside what they could have done to fix it.  You can see the story from all three perspectives and that’s one of the reasons why it was so difficult for me to pass judgement or even side with someone. And I still can’t, I still don’t think that anybody was wrong. I think that in this situation it is one of those things that, “it is what it is” and you just kinda move past it.

I just kept thinking what would I do if I was in her situation. Actually, not even her situation, what I would do if I was in Nathan’s situation because his character is probably closest to myself than any of the other ones. I can see where Sadie was lonely and I could see where she blossomed under the attention of another person who made her feel special. I could understand that as a married woman.  Also, I could understand Nathan’s POV probably a little but more because, honestly, I identify with his personality more.  An affair would never have crossed my mind, if there was a problem, that would not be the thing that I think about.  He went about it in a terrible, terrible way though.

I think they both couldn’t see past themselves, to get to the heart of the issue. Nathan was thinking a lot about how her behavior was effecting him and not how his behavior was effecting the marriage.  And Sadie was the same way, it wasn’t a team effort on either of their parts.  That’s where they really lost sight of each other.

Finn came off a little creepy, honestly.  I mean, I could see the passion and I could see the temptation and I could see that relationship progressing into more than just a fling but at the same time he remembered her from ten years ago. Then he did like this emotional transfer. It was odd because a lot can happen in ten years and for him to try to pick up right where they left off, it just came off as weird to me.  One of the things that kinda bugged me was the fact that they never really addressed the affair.  It was like it was swept under the rug and the basis of the book was communication and right when they needed it the most they kinda dropped the ball. That didn’t sit well with me.

I will say this, one of the positives outcomes reading a book like this from someone like me (happily married) would be that it immediately made me think, “Am I showing my spouse enough love? Does he really know how much he means to me?”

Highly recommend it, really great read.