Lila Chapin feels invisible. A devoted wife and mother of two, she sacrificed her teaching career as her husband’s job moved the family around the country. Now settled in the Boston suburbs, he is swiftly climbing the corporate ladder while she takes care of him and their sons. She is greatly appreciated at the soup kitchen where she volunteers, but at home she’s taken for granted. She realizes … realizes just how true this is when her husband and children forget her fortieth birthday.
She withdraws a chunk of money from the bank and takes off. This will be her birthday present to herself: a month without her family, a month in which she puts herself, her needs and her whims first.
Ken Chapin loves his wife. Yes, he has been neglecting her lately as he vies for a senior management position at the high-tech firm where he works, but he’s always assumed they were a team, working side by side to make their family happy. Yet what kind of team is it when Ken gets all the glory and Lila does all the vacuuming? Her disappearance forces him to reconsider the direction their lives have taken and just how much he needs her. But has his insight arrived too late to save their marriage?
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Enjoyable, resuscitated-marriage romance, originally published in 1990 by Harlequin American
Lila Chapin has been married for 16 years and is thoroughly burned out with her life as a neglected, stay-at-home wife and mother. Her husband Ken is a workaholic, who has basically left the vast majority of the responsibility for raising their two sons, 10-year-old Michael and 8-year-old Danny, on her shoulders, and both he and the boys have been taking her for granted for a long time now. When Ken and the boys forget the major turning point of her 40th birthday, it is the final straw for Lila. She withdraws enough money from her joint, marital bank account for a month-long solo vacation at a beachside inn, leaving a note for Ken telling him why she’s going and for how long, but not where.
Meanwhile, Ken alternates between rage, shame, and dread—what if Lila never comes back, or comes back with a personality change, such that she’s no longer the conveniently quiet, biddable little housewife she’s always been? In a state of educational despair, Ken eventually accepts responsibility that he’s completely blown it, and he’d better do something to fix this mess, ASAP, before he loses his wife for good.
The premise of Lila never having any boundaries, and meekly stuffing down her resentment, year after year, until she has finally gunny-sacked enough injustices for a guilt-free disappearing act, seems painfully passive-aggressive. But this rather unassertive approach to a marriage on the rocks is not necessarily unexpected from a 1990 Harlequin American, a line of romances focusing on family relationships as much as the central romantic connection. In addition, at the time this novel was written, it was considered very innovative to offer a reunion romance in the form of a middle-aged, long-time-married couple in desperate need of revitalizing their relationship. This type of plot isn’t as readily available these days, so the author’s offering it as an indie reprint is a nice change of pace in the current romance-fiction marketplace.
I also have no particular problem finding this plot authentic, because I personally know of two women, if not in Lila’s particular age group (Baby Boomer, born around 1950), but from the generation just before (the Greatest Generation, born around 1929), who made a similar mid-life, marital choice as Lila. Both also left their neglectful husband at age 40. The first one left just after her third and last child went off to college. The second one, similar to Lila, still had young children at home. Her oldest son was 13, her second son was 10, and her daughter was only 5. The first woman came back after her husband begged her to, practically on bended knee, and they stayed married 55 years total, until his death. The second woman didn’t come back. She filed for divorce soon after, and within the next year she remarried a much younger and more attentive man, while simultaneously handing over physical custody of her kids to her ex.
I think this particular plot will satisfy an emotional need of unhappy, neglected wives everywhere, who can vicariously experience, through this HEA romance, the positive possibility of my first, real-life example—a successfully resuscitated, moribund marriage.
Finally, fans of Ms. Arnold, who is an excellent, award-winning romance writer, will enjoy this novel because it is a well written, classic, dual-point-of-view, no-cheating, HEA romance.
I rate this story as follows:
Heroine: 3 stars
Hero: 3 stars
Romance Plot: 4 stars
Beach Setting: 4 stars
Writing: 4 stars
Overall: 3.6 rounded to 4 stars