Review: The Husband Lesson by Jeanie London

Publisher: Harlequin Superromance
Where did you get the book: e-ARC from Netgalley
Release date: 5th July

Review contains minor spoilers.

Blurb taken from goodreads:

There’s been a mistake!

“Karan Reece has no other explanation for this situation. Being assigned to work with her ex-husband, Dr. Charles Steinberg? She really must have offended someone to be forced to spend her days with him. The only good thing she can say is at least this arrangement has an expiration date.

Funny thing, though, is that working together for a shared cause forces them to look at each other differently. She’s learning a lot about him and his strengths. And those discoveries are causing her to see him in a new way…a very attractive, can’t-wait-to-get-my-hands-on-you way. Seems that life with Charles is a lesson she’s willing to study again!”

The Husband Lesson starts off with the heroine, Karen, standing before a judge being sentenced for driving a vehicle whilst impaired. Karen’s not a drink driver though. She has low blood sugar, and one mistaken glass of champagne impaired her ability to drive, and now she’s being sentenced by the judge – who also happens to be a an old school mate who ‘seems’ to have a grudge against Karen. ‘Wannabe Jenny’ (the judge) sentences Karen to do community service at a shelter for domestic violence, and it’s there that Karen comes into contact with her ex-husband, Charles.

Karen for most of the book is a arrogant superficial heroine, and she drove me batty. Whilst reading this, it felt like the characters were stuck in highschool. It was really irritating that the Judge was called Wannabe Jenny by the heroine because of something that happened in highschool. And what I felt was pointless was the heroine pointing out that Jenny had lines around her mouth which would benefit from cosmetic surgery. It was all so juvenile.

Have I mentioned how snooty Karen was also? I quote:

“Of course, Karen could have gotten Jack down the aisle years ago, if she wanted to be a cop’s wife. No, thank you. Still, to her knowledge, Jack hadn’t even come close to marriage in all the years since Karen had dumped him. The man obviously had never gotten over losing her. Who could blame him? They’d been so good together. With her by his side, he could have been running for senate himself by now.”

I found Karen to be quite distasteful, and I wasn’t engaged by her character at all. And the same goes for the hero, Charles.

Whilst as the shelter, Karen runs into Charles and there is a lot of unresolved anger between them. Karen decided to break off their marriage because he wasn’t there for her, and Charles wasn’t emotionally involved in the marriage. I didn’t feel the supposed connection between them, and for a romance book, it was very unsatisfying as there was no active romance between them at all. There’s no romance until towards the end of the book, where they both come together after a ridiculous hostage situation. And Karen realises that she’s self absorbed, but I didn’t feel that it was done in a believable way. It was obviously done to show readers that she had changed, but it felt so artificial.

I’m big fan of ex-lovers reunited, but The Husband Lesson didn’t work for me. Very slow plot, unlikeable characters, and it was very much lacking in romance.

Another thing, the PDF Kindle e-ARC of this title so poorly formatted that I had a very hard time even reading. There were gaps of space, lines were misplaced, and for the most part, I had no idea who was speaking in the dialogue scenes because it was all jumbled up together.

All together, I slogged through this book, and I’m sorry to say I was so glad when I got to the last page.

I give The Husband Lesson a D.