A chance encounter with a stranger on an airplane sends Elyse Bearden into an emotional tailspin. Suddenly Elyse is willing to risk everything: her safe but stale marriage, her seemingly perfect life in an affluent Southern suburb, and her position in the community. She finds herself cutting through all the instincts that say “no” and instead lets “yes” happen. As Elyse embarks on a risky affair, her longtime friend Kelly and the other women in their book club begin to question their own decisions about love, sex, marriage, and freedom. There are consequences for Elyse, her family, and her circle of close friends, all of whom have an investment in her life continuing as normal. But is normal what she really wants after all? In the end it will take an extraordinary leap of faith for Elyse to find–and follow–her own path to happiness. An intelligent, sexy, absorbing tale and an honest look at modern-day marriage, Love in Mid Air offers the experience of what it’s like to change the course of one’s own destiny when finding oneself caught in mid air.
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I had seen a few reviews on this book and was excited to have a chance to review it for myself. What drew me to this book was the strong friendships which has always been a draw for me – and I did really enjoy this part of the book.
I struggled with Elyce’s extra marital affair and while this is largely what the book is about, and Kim writes it with a flair and a good sense of humor, it wasn’t a topic I typically enjoy or read and stumbled a bit into a genre and language I typically do not read as well.
Going back to the friendships, that is what made the book for me – I enjoyed the conversations between the women. I liked how honest and real they could be. Since the women relationships was what I enjoyed, I asked author Kim Wright how important these characters were in the process of writing the book. Here is what Kim said:
One of the things that always frustrated me about divorce books is that they focus almost exclusively on the couple splitting up, the lover if there is one, and perhaps the kids. It’s like the whole drama goes down in a very limited environment and rarely is any attention paid to something that I think is huge, i.e., the effect that the split up has on the couple’s friends. I certainly found this in my own divorce, which was now almost 15 years ago….my husband and I were in many regards a lucky couple, with a nice home, beautiful kids, a wide social circle. When I moved out it shook up everyone, especially my girlfriends who were in similar situations. I think quite a few of them began questioning their own marriages – asking themselves exactly how happy they were, how you define “good enough,” wondering if the little cracks in their own marriage were capable of becoming the yawning chasm that had developed between my husband and me.
Kim Wright has been writing about travel, food, and wine for more than 25 years and is a two-time recipient of the Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Writing.
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