The Husband Lesson by Jeanie London

The Husband Lesson Reviews

• 
  Carrie

  After I finished this book I just felt…meh. It doesn’t really feel like it was a romance novel. There is a happily ever after, but it comes at the very end of the book. The couple never even goes on so much as a date throughout the book. Karan and Charles do share a past, which makes the HEA more believable, but I just felt like something was missing. Most of the story is about Karan and her self-centered behavior. Karan sees the world in one way - how it affects her. This changes as she visits a therapists and learns some things about herself. Charles is very one dimensional. He comes across as emotionally unavailable in the beginning and it doesn’t change really throughout the book. I didn’t feel a connection between the two.
• 
  Elena

  Real people, real problems. A badly broken marriage. Misconceptions, misunderstandings and lack of communication. Fate decided to challenge all of this by forcing Karan and Charles to revisit their past. Having been charged with drunk driving (Karan has issues with low blood sugar and just a zip of alcohol might give the wrong impression), Karan was sentenced to community service at the shelter where her doctor ex-husband volunteered. Second chance romances when done well are a treat. I enjoyed every minute of this book.
  
  Karan irritated me at the start of the story. A rich girl with two ex-husbands, self absorbed and apparently oblivious to consequences product of her negligence or reckless behaviour. 'Death didn't touch Karan's world. Nothing did. Everything skimmed right across the surface. She didn't deal with death. If she didn't like the headlines in the newspaper, she cancelled the subscription. If she didn't like the tragedy blasting sound bites, she turned off the television. Karan didn't deal in real life. Only in indulgence. In the things that didn't make it a bit of difference. I believed Charles' opinion of his ex-wife. I was on Charles' side.
  
  But Karan wasn't the person Charles and I thought. Or the person Charles chose to remember. Karan had compassion, was resilient and faced the consequences of her actions. She stumbled, fell and went back up and to the best of her abilities tried to make amends. With a mother so judgmental and emotionally absent, Karan was pretty much an orphan. At some point when Karan felt so lonely after her mother once again, fail to be a mother who cared, Karan actually thought of suicide. Her best friend, Susanna, came to the rescue. Susanna and Rhonda (director of the shelter Karan did her community service hours) were wonderful secondary characters.
  
  Ever so slowly Charles and Karan accepted their mistakes, talked about said mistakes, decisions were made based on what was right for them not because of what was expected of them and rekindled the love the never stopped feeling for each other. They became better persons and that was a joy to read.
• 
  Book Binge

  Ok, so this is one of those Harlequin Super Romances, but I have to tell you right off the bat that I think there is a ton of stuff in this novel that is very substantive. Certainly the two main characters are smart, intelligent, professional, worldly, yet they are ex-spouses and they are both carrying around a TON of baggage, much of which they don't even know how to decipher or have chosen subconsciously not to deal with.
  
  That being said, it is evident that Karan is a woman who has drawn strong responses from people in her past--both negative and positive. A simple traffic ticket--at least that is what it appears to be on the surface--is not so simple after all, especially when being adjudicated by a judge who Karan treated like dog doo in their high school days. Payback time!! Add in the presence, right in the middle of the hearing, the chief of police who, as it happens, was once Karan's really serious boyfriend--in love, planning a future, looking forward to the wedding after college, until he had the audacity to make a switch in his professional plans from lawyer to law enforcement, and she dropped him like a hot potato, and he is now married to another one of those girls who got the high-handed treatment from her in high school. Time to pay the piper, girl!! The upshot of this whole mess is that Karan ends up having to do community service in the new women's shelter for abused spouses and families, and the chief of staff there is her ex-husband Charles, the man who she loved deeply and who slowly but surely faded out of her life, allowing his surgical practice to become his partner instead of his wife. Karan is now divorced from husband #2, a doctor who was "safe," with whom there was definitely a sexual chemistry and with whom she was good friends. No love, because that would be too dangerous. She is living once again in the house that she and Charles bought even though the inside bears no resemblance to what it was during their marriage. Karan is screwed!!
  
  While it appears that this novel is about Karan, that is not entirely true. There is a very clear and bright spotlight on Charles, on his internal struggles, his old resentments and angers, his deep desire to get Karan re-assigned to another community service project, especially after she messes up pretty badly and the safety of a couple of the women and families is put in danger. The glue that holds this story together is the therapist/psychologist who is the co-chief of staff at the shelter, a woman who genuinely likes Karan and Charles both, who loves helping these women and their children, and who sees incredible potential in Karan and admires and respects Charles for his professional achievements, but recognizes that he is a total dufus in his personal life. Her quiet but insightful comments to Karan and Charles individually start them both remembering, thinking, doing some authentic grieving, and in lots of ways she holds their feet to the fire emotionally.
  
  I liked this book a lot!! I felt it was a wonderful expose of a marriage gone wrong but one that could have survived if these two people had been honest with themselves and each other, had been honest about their long-term goals and objectives, and had been willing to put their relationship ahead of their ambition. What was equally fascinating about this story was the way the author brought these two face to face repeatedly, forcing them to process more and more of their past, making them remember stuff they had refused to remember, and which ultimately helped to siphon away the anger and resentment so that each could begin to take responsibility for they way they had failed each other.
  
  There was something so positive about this book, even while it felt like these two were going to end up murdering each other. Karan was boxed in legally, while Charles' professional obligations kept him lashed to the mast. Behind the overt action in each encounter was the recognition on the part of the reader that these two just couldn't get away from each other and that was the way it was supposed to be.
  
  I have not read anything written previously by this author, but I think she exhibited a writing skill that was quite advanced, telling the story with an expert touch, and keeping all the background characters and the historical happenings in Charles' and Karan's lives straight. Lots of authors don't pull that off nearly as well. When push comes to shove, this was not a lightweight happy-go-lucky kind of romance. Rather it was girtty and uncomfortable and sort of an emotional toe-to-toe slugfest--not in a War of the Roses fashion, but certainly with enough adversarial sense about it. Many of us have read Harlequin publications down through the years and have found them to be fun and entertaining. This novel is certainly worth reading but I wouldn't put it in the "fun" category. That being said, it is a really splendid piece of writing and deserves to be read with care and attention. I know that I have already put it in my "to be read again" file.
  
  I give it a rating of 4.5 out of 5.
  
  This review was originally posted on
  Book Binge by Judith.
• 
  Judith

  OK, so this is one of those Harlequin Superromances, but I have to tell you that I stayed up well past my bedtime to finish this one. A well-to-do socialite, now once again single after her second divorce, finds herself in court with a drunk driving charge against her. The judge is an old adversary from high school days when Karan was the queen of the "stuck-ups" and the judge was one of those kids on the outside looking in. The tables are well and truly turned. Her attorney successfully lobbies for community service rather than jail-time (with the assistance of the Chief of Police who was Karan's first really serious beau and who was kicked to the curb when he chose to go into law enforcement rather than into a law practice. That choice didn't fit into her "life plan.") So this lady finds herself working in a newly opened domestic abuse family shelter and her lack of skills begins to cause some serious problems along with the fact that the co-director of the program is a doctor who was her first husband. Now I also want to point out that when you review the bare bones of the plot and story line it sounds like a long-running soap opera. But I have to say that there are some very interesting characters that give some serious depth to this tale--Karan's mother who is a "closet alcoholic," the psychotherapist who is presiding over Karan's court-ordered therapy, and who is a genuine "peopel" person, the ex-husband who has a whole truck load of issues. While there is some obvious adversarial stuff built into this story, I think my liking for this novel revolves around the fact that both the main characters were mature enough to finally work through some of the hurt and upsets that it turns out they both still harbor long after the divorce. That they see their own need to "grow up" and the ways in which that process moves forward makes for some very interesting reading. This book also delves just a bit into the need for these kinds of havens for spouses and children of angry and destructive husbands. All in all, I found it to be an entertaining and stimulating read.
• 
  Sheri

  My grade: B+. I really liked this story. It attracted me because of the different premise. A woman is convicted of Driving While Ability Impaired (combination of low blood sugar and alcohol below the legal limit) and is sentenced to community service at a domestic abuse shelter. Her first husband is the director and they have a lot of unresolved issues. She's also a Country Club Barbie. Very sharp but no passions to direct her mind toward. Part of her sentence is mandatory counseling. Both Karan and Charles have a lot to figure out about themselves--things they'd never seen before. For Karan, it's like a light going on. I loved the issues both of these characters had to work through and how doing this hard work on themselves enabled them to change and get their lives back on track. Back on the same track, by the way. They didn't get together until the very end. From about midpoint on, I figured that was the way it would be. I really did want to see a bit more of them together, see them interacting and enjoying life together. Most of the book they were struggling against each other or just struggling. Well, I have a feeling there will be another story about Karan's best friend and hopefully I'll get another look at them in that book. I would definitely read a book about Suzanne.
• 
  Cleffairy Cleffairy

  Reviewed at:
  Library of Lights
  
  Date reviewed: 4 May 2011
  
  Review link:
  http://mykindaland.com/?p=232
  
  The Husband Lesson by Jeanie London is a little bit slow-paced for me and i found it difficult not to skip a few pages until some point of the story. But the paced picked up soon after and I found that the book is not only romantic, but full of moral as well.
  
  I just wish that there’s more romance in this story instead of too much description on the social work and whatnot. The ending somehow disappointed me. I wish there’s more fire and passion at the end of the story, but there was none. This is a good read nevertheless. I enjoyed reading it though I find it difficult to grasps in the beginning.
  
  I rate this book 3 out of 5 stars. I received an ARC of this book from Harlequin Publisher via Netgalley and I was not compensated in any ways for writing this review.
  
  For more information on this title, please click here.
  
  
• 
  Micaella

  Good ol' romance with a hint of comedy. It's always nice to read a book where you see the characters grow with every chapter. Once you pick it up and start reading, you'd be surprised that you can't seem to put it down.
• 
  Leigh

  
  http://www.likesbooks.com/cgi-bin/boo...
• 
  Harlequin Books

  Miniseries: Together Again
• 
  Harlequin Books

  Miniseries: Together Again
  
• 
  Gail

  Good reunion story. I'd have liked a little more of the hero's issues-how his past related to his avoidance-but overall I liked it a lot.