Just a Couple of Books

I only finished two books this week. One is How to Say Babylon so I'll be saving my thoughts on this book for our Read With Us discussion in June. I always come away from our discussions with a better understanding of the book, and that would be really helpful for me with this one. 

The second book is a bit of fluff that I felt compelled to read as soon as I saw the premise. The Husbands is not the type of book I usually read (at all!) but the premise sounded so intriguing that I had to give it a try. A single woman, Lauren, returns home to her flat in London after attending a "hen-do" and is quite surprised to find Michael on her landing. She's even more surprised to find out that he is her husband. Her flat is mostly the same, but there are differences, like the wall color, rugs, and photos on the wall. There are even pictures of Michael on her phone. When he goes up to the attic to change a lightbulb, another completely different husband comes back down. Lauren eventually discovers that she has a magic attic with an endless supply of husbands, and some of her own circumstances (like her job) change with each new husband. I know this sounds ridiculous but Gramazio has written it with a bit more depth than the simple premise might suggest.

Worldbuilding could have been a little more detailed but then the novel might move out of the genre of chick-lit romance and into science fiction. The author has written about 200+ husbands and this becomes very tedious after a while. But the husbands are somewhat ethnically diverse, and Lauren meets one "husband" named Bohai who becomes her confidante in the real world. He has a magical blanket chest and can get new wives or husbands. Some of Lauren's husbands are interesting, as are the differences between them. Then there are her maneuvers to get her current husband back up into the attic when she decides she wants a hopefully better one. Lauren gets a bit philosophical towards the end as she approaches the anniversary of the magic attic, and the ending is abrupt and dramatic. I've been married for 43 years and there have been times when my husband is lucky I didn't ask him to check the attic while crossing my fingers that a better husband might come back down the attic ladder. But the book is definitely fun, creative, and entertaining, and it might even provide me with a daydream or two about what could be in my attic the next time my husband does something that makes me raise my eyebrows. It was just three stars for me, but sometimes a fun and creative bit of fluff is just what you want to read. I even liked the cover!

I hope you've got something good to read this weekend!