View source for Trust by Mike Bullen

{{infobox1
|title=Trust
|author=Mike Bullen
|reviewer= Luke Marlowe
|genre=General Fiction
|summary= An honest, hilarious and surprisingly heart-warming look at relationships, middle age, and the complications of both love and lust, ''Trust'' is a fantastic read  - for men and women of any age. 
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=293
|publisher=Sphere
|date=November 2015
|isbn= 978-0751559255
|cover=0751559253
|aznuk=0751559253
|aznus=0751559253
}}

Greg and Amanda are happy. Unmarried, but together thirteen years and with two young daughters, they are very much in love. Dan and Sarah aren't so fortunate. Their marriage is going through the motions, and they're staying together for the sake of their troubled teenage son. Following a business conference away from home, one bad decision sends a happy couple into turmoil, and turns an unhappy couple into love's young dream. As secrets and betrayals threaten to send both relationships out of control, there's only one thing that can keep everything from falling apart: Trust

Mike Bullen is best known as the creator and lead writer on the TV show ''Cold Feet''. Hitting screens back in 1997, ''Cold Feet'' was a show that really stands up 18 years later, deftly combining vividly drawn characters with humour and lightness in order to look at how people and relationships work, tackling issues such as cancer, infertility, miscarriage, infidelity and death along the way. It's much missed – I don't think there have been any worthy successors, and I would certainly love to see it back on our screens. ''Trust'' is Bullen's first novel – and the things he excelled at in ''Cold Feet'' he absolutely excels at here. 

The opening of the book means it may take readers a little while to warm to the two lead men – but their actions and the consequences of them are eloquently explored, so that a few chapters in I was rooting for pretty much everybody I encountered in this book to have a happy ending. What the happy ending will be, however, is something that Bullen explores well, and constantly toys with the readers' expectations as to how these characters will end up. 

This may well look at first glance like something that may fall into the Chic Lit/ Romantic Comedy genre, but I found it far more far reaching that, and was reminded of books by [[:Category:David Nicholls|David Nicholls]] and [[:Category:Mark Haddon|Mark Haddon]], as I really think this is a read that lot of people will enjoy and empathise with, given that it explores relationships, suburbia and the surprising complexities of people so well. Many thanks to the publishers for the copy. 

For further reading, I would recommend [[Us by David Nicholls]] – a deep and detailed look at a relationship and a family that engages and delights yet never dips too far into sentimentality. 

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[[Category:Humour]]