Best Intentions - Emily Listfield

*** 1/2 - A meaningful book about love, trust, and betrayal - this is much deeper than your usual 'chicklit' fare. And I think it hit one too many sore spots for me to enjoy as much as I probably would have under other circumstances. Best Intentions very ability to strike those sore spots, though, is a testament to the writing and the emotional honesty of the novel.

I received a free copy of this book for review.

Lisa Barkley's world is turning inexorably upside-down. The economic downturn is putting both her and her husband's jobs at risk and jeopardizes the elite private school her two pre-teen daughters are attending. Her marriage with Sam seems to be falling apart - though lack of effort, through lack of trust. And when an old college friend shows up in town, even Lisa's best friend can no longer be relied on for comfort. As Lisa nears forty, everything from her career to her relationships seems to be on a self-destruction course.

Despite the dire plot summary, this isn't a melodramatic novel filled with doom. It's about very real and everyday pressures that pile up. Career stress, a cracking relationship with both friends and significant others, friends in destructive relationships, the added worries of motherhood (though I know nothing about the last). And although the specifics of her life were quite foreign to me, I nonetheless felt a kinship with the narrator - I, too, know what it feels like to have nothing to hang on to but good intentions gone astray. And that's where this novel was a clear success.

I was definitely engaged with Lisa and her life; I was rooting for her to succeed every step of the way. I sympathized with her heartache and her worries, with her desire to have someone else take care of her when the going got tough - and with her misery when that sort of protection wasn't forthcoming. At times I was too engaged with the story for my own comfort - but I was always drawn back to it. Because all of us have to find a way to live with uncertainty, and I hoped to maybe draw a clue or two from Lisa's predicament. Whether I have or not remains to be seen, but I certainly feel less alone now. And sometimes that's just what I need.

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