Published By: Virago
Pages: 400
Released On: 12/06/2025
When Emily catches sight of Gennifer Hall at a party, she is transported back to the moment they fell in love as teenagers. Their connection was electric, and they thought it was forever.
Twenty years later, Gen is an Olympic runner, the career she strived for, while Emily is living a picture-perfect life: Manhattan townhouse, two young children and a wealthy husband, Jack. But Jack’s controlling behaviour is spiralling, and Emily has lost sight of who she once was.
Now, despite Emily’s fracturing marriage and the pressures of Gen’s career, they are drawn back together by a magnetic attraction. After years of heartbreak, missed chances and misunderstandings, will they finally get a second chance at first love?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Virago for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
This is another book I’ve been really excited about, and because I was in a bit of a reding slump, there was a lot of hope riding on this one. But it didn’t quite live up to it.
I was a little concerned to begin with. I’ve read quite a few books about abusive husbands and relationship issues and the imbalance of power, and I was worried this would be the same and I’d have no real compassion for it, but Marie did prove me wrong there at least.
I really felt for Emily, she is a wife and mother who may have lost herself somewhere on the way, and seems to do everything her husband says because he owns the house, he earns the money, and she goes with it because it’s not worth refusing, especially in regards to her children, and I can’t blame her for that. She was lovely. I immediately disliked Jack, which I suppose is what Marie wanted.
Marie is telling two stories I think. There’s one about this tumultuous marriage, and the other is a decades-long love, just not to the same person. This gives her the chance to write two different Emily’s, with different loves, moods, interests, and passions, which I thought was interesting.
This is my first of Marie’s books and it was an interesting one. Entertaining, well written, and fleshed out characters. But I do think it was a tad long. The story was good and had a lot going for it, but I did find bits were drawn out and could have been dealt with quicker. Which in turn makes some of the dialogue stilted. Yes I know it’s a novel and isn’t real, but this isn’t a fantasy story, it’s a real-life contemporary piece of writing and therefore I expect the dialogue to be closer to reality than other genres. But some of it, it just made me very aware I was reading a book instead of a real conversation.
I’ve seen some reviews that talk about how emotional they found it and maybe I’ve just got a heart made of stone because I didn’t really find that. The love stories are lovely and Marie can clearly write emotion, but I didn’t feel anything strongly about the story in terms of how moving it is Although it definitely did get better as it went along, and the final 1/4 of it definitely made up for the rest in that regard.
I think my overriding issue with it – and I know this is a me thing, rather than an issue with the book – but I found not much happened. My favourite books have something happening, a danger or peril or shock or big romantic gesture. This sort of toodled along nicely, pleasantly, but sort of all on one level and I was wanting something a bit more to happen. But again I’ aware that is my preference. I can’t fault her actual storytelling ability.
Books By Your Bedside 