This goes on for a year and the couple drifts further apart. Joanna,unable to cope with the loss,turns away from Joshua.Soon after ,he attempts to make love to her and she becomes angry and hysterical,hitting him.She is so over come with her grief that she does not see the grief that Joshua also has. Joshua and Joanna married when she became pregnant at seventeen and he in his early thirties( Joshua thought that she was twenty).When their baby girl is six weeks old,it was discovered that she had a fatal illness.I am guessing leukemia.The baby dies when she is about three years old. How does a couple survive the loss of their child?For some couples,it may either strenghten their bond or tear it apart.For this couple,the loss drifted them apart untill they were strangers in their home. Triggers: cheating, talk of abortion in flashback. And did I mention that the angst is off the charts? It is delicious. However, the hero’s shock method worked because this is an HP.

A year separation is really not a good idea if you need to work on your marriage. It’s the noble sacrifice that gets to me.

I love how cold and frozen the heroine is at the beginning and how it isn’t sex that cures her – it’s creative work, it’s the hard work of examining herself and deciding to change and let go of her hurt and fear.Īnother reason I like this story is I am a sucker for older heroes who back off for their younger heroines to live their life without them. He never cheated during their marriage or separation. He had an affair with her two years before meeting the h. When he told the h he had slept with his secretary for six months – he let her think it was during their marriage. The hero is redeemed at the end of this story in a twist that eased my mind, but a lot reviewers didn’t like it. The heroine is not that likeable at the beginning of the story, but she grows and changes with a brief stint of misinterpreting everything the hero does and says when he returns for the black moment. She also grieves her daughter, remembers how they met (and how she pursued him) and puts up with her horrible mother.

She becomes friend with the illustrator – who fills in nicely as a wanna be OM when the hero returns. Heroine writes a children’s book based on her childhood dog, a mischievous boxer. But he’s gone in the morning and she’s left to endure a year without the H, torturing herself with the thought that he is sleeping with his secretary. Heroine thinks she doesn’t care about the hero any more until the night before he leaves and they finally have sex again. The hero has an unusual remedy – a separation for a year while he lectures in the US and the heroine stays in London and perhaps takes a lover and lives an independent life. Marriage in trouble of a May/December couple who are unable to communicate (or have sex) one year after the death of their toddler daughter.

The failed marriage carole mortimer