The Pretend Wife

April 20, 2009
With still more to say about marriage, fidelity and the importance of being wittily earnest, Asher (My Husband's Sweethearts
)—Julianna Baggott's adult fiction pseudonym—brings an abundance of warmth and wisdom to this tale of lost-and-found love. Married woman Gwen Merchant agrees to pretend to be the newlywed of former beau Elliott Hull to appease his dying mom. Gwen, smothering in a marriage to Peter, jumps at the chance for a redo at an abruptly ended college romance, and it's a slippery slope that Gwen slides down with passion and verve, falling in love with Elliott and becoming attached to his sister and her precocious kids and the imperious and uncannily perceptive matriarch, Vivian. But while weaving one faux relationship, Gwen unthreads the very real sadness in her own tattered family, including a widowed dad and a marriage that hides more than it confides. It's more than a little disappointing, if not surprising, that Asher inserts an improbably happy ending to push the sweet and funny Gwen into a trite epiphany.