Published: June 25, 2024
Length: 384 pages
Format: Hardcover
Genre: Historical Fiction
Characters: Mallory Dunne, Sam, Monk Adams, Paige, Hannah Ainsworth and Lucien Beck
POV: dual, 3rd person

𝒞𝑜𝓃𝓉𝑒𝓃𝓉:
second chances, forbidden love, suspense, dual timeline, two stories going on simultaneously

Review

Set in 1950s Egypt and contemporary Long Island, Husbands and Lovers follows two different timelines, one in the present day, with Mallory a single mom that sees her son getting sicker and sicker, needing a kidney transplant, but refuses to contact the father, a famous singer, for help. Her sister Paige convinces her to finally contact him though. The other is married Hannah, living in Egypt in the 1950’s with her British husband, trying to forget her past as a mother and wife in Hungary. Both stories will intersect at some point.

I loved Mallory’s story. I hung on every word of the love story of her and Monk. I did not expect young Mallory’s story to go where it did though. I was so shocked. Oh my heart… 💔

I also discovered a weakness for hot male musicians. My goodness, I truly didn’t think I would fall for Monk Adams, but I did and hard!

And even though Hannah’s story didn’t grab me, her story was still beautiful. A heartbreaking… absolutely soul crushing story!

All in all a fantastic read!

“For me, what happens on social media is like a tree falling in a forest on the other side of the world. Besides, ignorance is bliss.”

“How you start out with all these paths, all these choices. And then you realize that once you choose one path, you can’t go back. You think about all the paths you could have taken and didn’t.”

“Music was the only thing that saved me”

Blurb

New England, 2022. Three years ago, single mother Mallory Dunne received the telephone call every parent dreads—her ten-year-old son, Sam, had been airlifted from summer camp with acute poisoning from a toxic death cap mushroom, leaving him fighting for his life. Now, searching for the donor kidney that will give her son a chance for a normal life, Mallory’s forced to confront two harrowing secrets from her past: her mother’s adoption from an infamous Irish orphanage in 1952, and her own all-consuming summer romance fourteen years earlier with her childhood best friend, Monk Adams— one of the world’s most beloved singer-songwriters—a fairy tale cut short by a devastating betrayal.

Cairo, 1951. After suffering tragedy beyond comprehension in the war, Hungarian refugee Hannah Ainsworth has forged a respectable new life for herself—marriage to a wealthy British diplomat with a coveted posting in glamorous Cairo. But a fateful encounter with the enigmatic manager of a hotel bristling with spies leads to a passionate affair that will reawaken Hannah’s longing for everything she once lost. As revolution simmers in the Egyptian streets, a pregnant Hannah finds herself snared in a game of intrigue between two men . . . and an act of sacrifice that will echo down the generations.

Timeless and bittersweet, Husbands & Lovers takes readers on an unforgettable journey of heartbreak and redemption, from the revolutionary fires of midcentury Egypt to the moneyed beaches of contemporary New England. Acclaimed author Beatriz Williams has written a poignant and beautifully voiced novel of deeply human characters entangled by morally complex issues—of privilege, class, and the female experience—inside worlds brought shimmeringly to life.

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