Disillusioned and suffering from boredom in an empty nest situation, Sarah goes off to stay with a girl friend in France. She gets a job playing violin in an orchestra and naturally gets a gorgeous Frenchman too. Hubby David is left at home, stunned, but his loneliness calls for a life change too. The twist that brings them back together is certainly an unusual one in the genre, a lovely plot angle, then we do have to have the ‘human drama’ to tie it all together, but it was well told, sensitively handled and poignant. The authors are a clever writing team, you really cannot tell who is actually writing at any one time. They are very good.
After twenty years of comfortable marriage, and with the kids finally off her hands, Sarah Lewis realises she has filled the washing machine once too often. Surely there must be more to life than this? What she wants is an adventure - a wild, unpredictable adventure - but her husband, good old reliable David, is very happy with the status quo. Besides, he's got his old car to tinker with, when he eventually gets round to it.
What Sarah needs is a gap year for grown-ups - and she wants to do it alone. Confident the grass must be greener elsewhere, she heads for France, leaving behind a devastated and resentful David, faced with an empty house and a freezer full of meals-for-one.
But is life really better on the other side of the fence? With a gorgeous French man demanding her company and a renewed joie de vivre, Sarah certainly seems to think so. But then a catastrophe threatens to de-rail much more than Sarah's little adventure. Pretty soon, she begins to wonder whether gap years are for grown-ups after all...
Annie Ashworth and Meg Sanders have written ten non-fiction books and eight novels together while remaining the best of friends. They both live in Stratford-upon-Avon.
