Rating: 
Summary: Revenge: None in this book!
Review: I picked up this book in the super market, ready for a good book of wit and fun. What I got was a long, depressing book of life. There are lots of things with middle age we can all laugh about, and I thought this would be a book of them. However, it was only sadness. We get enough of real life, please pass on this one.
Rating: 
Summary: I enjoyed every page
Review: Read it, you will love it!
Rating: 
Summary: Everything you could ask for in a novel!!
Review: This is one of those fun books that is easy to read in a day or two. It's not necessarily a "fun" subject matter, but it's treated lightly enough that it reads as a fun story. The story deals with a woman whose husband meets someone else (younger)after many years of marriage and 2 children who are now adults. Elizabeth Buchan is a great writer and I loved the funny parts scattered throughout. I love books that deal with real issues in life where you can see both the serious and funny sides of the issue - and by the time the ending of the story comes around you've learned something in the process. This is one of those books!
Rating:
Summary: The best revenge!
Review: This is a truly well written, pithy tale about a women in the middle of her life (looking both forward and back). While many may not appreciate the subtleties of the main character, Rose's, victory in the end - the fact that she chose to pull herself together and examine her life rather than vindictively striking out at her departing husband was wholly satisfying to me. We all know the impulse to go balistic, rather than to go with the flow of life, and that sort of book would have relegated Rose's story to just another tired tale of a woman scorned. This is one of the best books I've come across in the past few years, and I enjoyed it completely.
Rating: 
Summary: What Revenge?
Review: I'm a middle-aged woman and I was very disappointed in it. I wanted something that showed how age and experience can outwit youth and miniskirts, but it's not here. It's not that Buchan doesn't have writing talent; it's just that her characters were pretty unbelievable to me -- they have no standards, no guts, no pride. Read Beth Gutcheon, Anita Shreve or Anita Brookner instead.
Rating: 
Summary: What Revenge?
Review: I was ready for something fun and inspiring. This book (which I listened to on CD) seemed dull and depressing to me. Where was the revenge?It was also very difficult to follow in the audio format. It kept jumping around in time without any warning. On paper this might not have been a problem, but it was very confusing to listen to. I can think of several ways this could have been rectified, but no signals were given. I wouldn't recommend it, particularly not in audio form.
Rating:
Summary: Well written and a good read....
Review: Elizabeth Buchan notes that a very old saying reminds us living well is the best revenge. Once you reach the point you decide the other person is only human and that no matter how much you loved him or her if she or he doesn't love you back, or love you back well enough to do something about it, there's not much you can do. So, you decide to get on with your own life. A few years ago the film 'Fatal Attraction' offered one alternative for the woman scorned, but most of us don't go that route. Instead, we attempt like Rose of THE REVENGE OF THE MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN to get over it and get on with it. But it takes time. I had a friend whose wife left him on Saturday. He decided to get over it by going to the beach for several days. He left on a Sunday, thinking by Thursday when he came back home he would be "cured" of his pain. Of course he wasn't. It takes time to heal. A self-help book published back in the 1970s around the time I went through a divorce suggested you give yourself two years to heal. Then you might be ready to involve yourself with some one new should you choose. I found it most true. I involved myself with some one six months after I separated from my "other" and it was a disaster. Next time I waited more than two years and it worked out much better. My daughter was widowed seven years ago and remarried last summer. Like the character Jamie Lee Curtis plays in 'Freaky Friday' I think it will work. The psyche needs time to heal and you are worth the wait. Rose has good sense. She takes time to heal when her twenty-five year-old marriage ends because her husband goes off the tracks at age 51 and falls for a 28 year old woman who also happens to work for Rose!! But younger people grow older, and although the besotted male may not see the "warts" when he falls for his new "girl" eventually like the barnacles of old age they show up. Sometimes when this happens, the old partner looks really good. Sometimes the old partner takes the wandering partner back. Most often, nothing fixes the old relationship. But the jilted ex has better things to do with his or her life than sit around and dwell on the old ex and his or her new 'partner'. If you are or have been through "splits-vil" you might want to read this book. It shows you a way to live well without seeking revenge.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful book!
Review: Elizabeth Buchan writes with uncommon insight and great compassion about the unraveling of a 25-year-old marriage. Rose is blissfully happy in her empty nest and feels fulfillment through her marriage to Nathan and her job as a book reviewer. Her shock is complete when Nathan informs her quietly one night that he has "found someone else." The someone else turns out to be Rose's assistant, Minty, who soon takes her job as well as her husband. Rose goes through the usual stages of despair, anger, and depression, but eventually finds great strength and determination within herself. Author Buchan does not fall back on the usual cliches of the single woman being rescued by a fabulous new job or a returning swain, but instead forces her character to dig deep within her own resources to create a new life for herself. Nathan, on the other hand, realizes too late what he has given up. Reading this book certainly makes me want to read others by this author.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully satisfying
Review: Buchan writes with amazing honesty infused with humor and pain and insight, and draws her characters in 3-D. Her words are strung together like a beautiful garland, and I am anxious to read her other works. The heroine was immensely sympathetic, but not without her own admitted flaws. I very much relished this book.
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Summary: Silly title, enjoyable book
Review: Don't be mislead by the title of this novel, it's not quite as light and fluffy as the title and cover art may lead you to believe. Imagine this, you are a 47 year old woman happily married for over 20 years with two grown children, a job that you adore and a husband whom you love deeply. One day you are blindsighted with the information that your husband is leaving you for a younger woman. And not just any other woman, she's your trusted co-worker, and by the way you are out of a job too. This is the hand that our heroine Rose is dealt early on in the novel. How she copes with the destruction of her marriage and her struggle to find her identity makes for some interesting and entertaining reading. While some of the scenarios may have been a little too predictable, and I often felt that Rose was far too civil to her estranged husband and his lover, this novel makes for an enjoyable read none the less.
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