The Man Test by Amanda Aksel
Marin Johns is San Francisco’s Pollyanna couples therapist. She’s months away from wedded bliss when she discovers her fiancé is having an affair. After nursing her broken heart with Kleenex and break-up songs, she adopts a new brand of thinking when she uncovers a tell-all book that proves all men are liars and cheaters who will do and say anything so they’re not found out. No exceptions.
In an attempt to convince her friends of her newfound truth, she begins a fictitious relationship with James, a do-gooder from Montana. Marin seeks any means necessary to catch him cheating from hiring a PI to enlisting the help of a fidelity tester. Will her new "boyfriend" beat the statistic or will Marin regret the satisfaction of being right?
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My Review:
I really enjoyed this story. Its about a woman, Miran, who is a couple's therapist. She goes on what is supposed to a week long bachelorette trip for her best friend's little sister, Rachel, who happens to be like her own little sister. She decides that she misses her fiance and decides to come home early. When she does she catches her fiance who just moved in with her cheating on her. This devastates her. She kicks him out and tells him its over. The same thing any normal women would do. Her friend buys her and meditation book she decides to returns it and finds another book while she is at the store. This book goes on to tell her all men lie and cheat. This makes her feel better about what happened to her. After it couldn't have had anything to do with her relationship if all men lie and cheat. She can't wait to tell her two best friends what she has found out and when one of them doesn't believe her she decides to prove it. Right off the bat she finds a cheater. She decides to try again to see if the rule holds. She runs into the best man from Rachel's wedding. After talking with him she decides he would be the perfect guy for her test. She begins to pretend to be in a relationship with him. Her friend warns her that when you go looking for trouble that exactly what you are going to find. James is sweet and a gentleman, not a guy who would cheat. She is determined to find him cheating. She thinks he is cheating on two different occasions both times he was not and then she finds out about the Man Test. This is when everything changes some for the good and others not so much.
This book was great. Almost everyone has been cheated on male or female. You can sympathize with how she is feeling. Wouldn't we all love to find a way to make it not personal. If everyone is being cheated on then it can't have anything do with us or our relationships. Marin gets so caught up in the spying and pretending that she over looks everything. Like how it will affect everyone in the end. She doesn't pay attention to the way James makes her feels or much about him. When trouble finally comes around and she proves her theory she isn't prepared for it. It winds up affecting almost all of her closest friends as well her and James. Once the trouble comes she is left right back where she started and still has to pick up these new pieces as well as deal with her feeling from the break up with her fiance. Miran and James were great characters. Her friends were great as well. The book was very well written and I really enjoyed it. It was a bit of a suspense. You kept waiting for Miran to realize that James wasn't the kind of guy who will cheat. She was so focused on her test though that she couldn't see that about him. Only when the damage was done could she see everything that had happened and how she truly felt about him and the whole situation.
About Amanda Aksel:
AMANDA (ah-MAHN-dah)- Latin- Meaning lovable or worthy of love. Fitting. I've always had an affinity for love. Being born in sunny San Diego in the mid 80’s to a young military couple gave me plenty of insight into the dynamics of a romantic relationship. Somewhere between moving coasts every three years, I found myself engrossed in fairytale romances and dressing up like a bride. My first real love was writing. By my sophomore year in a new high school in Virginia, I had a slew of short stories, songs, poems, and articles to my name. Writing was fun. It was a way to get the emotions, dialogue, and pictures out of my head, and create a destiny for my characters. I had no intention of making a career in writing, because it wasn’t what I did, it was who I was. In reality, I wanted to be an actress. Ah, to be the face of someone else’s authored story. The plan was to move in with my aunt in L.A. after graduation, but had a change of heart. Instead, I stayed with my high school sweetheart (now husband) and attended a film school in Norfolk, VA. It was at this school that I discovered my love for writing screenplays and felt compelled to follow that path. But…as the practical girl I was brought up to be, I decided to go to a real university. While working full time, I completed my BA in Psychology in four and a half years. Becoming a couple’s therapist had always been my “backup” career and there I was on my way to solving love's most complicated quandaries one couple at a time. With all my new free time after graduation, I decided to turn my full-length screenplay into a novel in hopes it would help my screenplay sell. I think I was in the middle of writing chapter two when I realized that everything I had ever written was to prepare me for that moment when I knew I was a novelist. Talk about the affirmation of my life. Now my plan is to solve love's most complicated quandaries one novel at a time.
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