View source for Tempting Fate by Jane Green

{{infobox1
|title=Tempting Fate
|author=Jane Green
|reviewer=Zoe Morris
|genre=Women's Fiction
|rating=4
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|isbn=978-0718157586
|pages=416
|publisher=Penguin
|date=September 2013
|summary=A well executed story of actions and consequences, this is a lengthy read but you'll fly through it.
|cover=0718157583
|aznuk=0718157583
|aznus=0718157583
}}
Sometimes people make mistakes. It only takes a moment to do something wrong and if you’re lucky, it only takes a moment to put it right. Or it can take months or years. Some mistakes you just have to live with, forever. Gabby has made one of ''those'' mistakes. The sort you can never really come back from.

This is a simple but compelling book that tells Gabby’s side of the story, though it’s a story that involves her children, her friends, her husband and another man. There always has to be another man in stories like this. 

Gabby and Elliott are a perfectly nice, perfectly normal middle class couple living in the USA, though she’s originally from the UK. They have a perfectly nice life – some might even say a perfect life – on the surface. There is little reason for Gabby to do what she does, but sometimes you don’t need a reason. Gabby knows better, that is clear. She and her friend Claire often discuss the errors of their mutual friends and acquaintances and Gabby is adamant that those women have a choice in what they are doing, the choices they are making. Oh, how the mighty fall. Once Gabby joins their club, and becomes one of ''those'' women, things no longer seem so black and white.

Jane Green imagines wonderful, real heroines for her stories, and Gabby is no exception. There are so many layers to what is going on, and as the pages pass it’s clear that the Gabby shown to the wider public is a far more confident version of the woman underneath, who doubts herself and at times her place in the world. She’s a sensible woman, though, and won’t throw it all away for nothing, so it’s important that the character of Matt has that extra something that pushes her over the edge and makes an offer she cannot refuse. You can feel the torment in her mind as she battles between what she wants to do, what she should do, and what others would want her to do in the situation.

I had a good inkling of what was coming, both from the way subtle clues were dropped in the story, and from the book’s blurb, but this in no way spoiled my enjoyment because the real intrigue came not in what happened, but in the aftermath, and this was hard to predict. It’s a story that has been told before to some extent, but this felt like a new, fresh version with a different perspective, and that’s what kept me reading.

This is about a third longer than most of the books of the same genre I’ve read this year, and yet it was one of the quickest to read because the story was full of so much momentum. I enjoyed it to the last page and closed the book satisfied both with the ending and the choices made by the characters to get them to this point.

All in all, an easy, entertaining and thoughtful read that I must recommend. My thanks go to the publishers for supplying this book.

It's not just youngish wives who have secrets, as [[The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty]]  and [[The Mill River Recluse by Darcie Chan]] shows us, both well worth a read.  You might also enjoy [[Fractured by Dani Atkins]].

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