To Have and To Hold
A Novel
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3.9 • 114 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
What happens when your Prince Charming turns out not to be so charming after all? In To Have and To Hold, bestselling author Jane Green offers a sizzling, highly entertaining look at romantic relationships after we say “I do.”
Alice knows she should be happy. A charming twenty-eight-year-old with a successful catering business, she’s always dreamed of a rose-covered cottage in the English countryside, filled with children and animals and home-cooked meals. Her favorite attire is comfy jeans, her best manicure features garden dirt under the nails. But when her teenage crush—the wealthy, dashing man-about-town Joe Chambers—wants to make her his bride, Alice is more than willing to play Cinderella to Joe’s prince. Never mind that he wants her to change—a diet, ice-blond highlights, stilettos, snooty gallery openings—and that he’s allergic to nature and kids. She tells herself she’s happy to sacrifice for love, and besides, with Joe’s stunning good looks and high-profile career at a top financial firm, every woman in London wants to be in her shoes.
But that’s just the problem. Despite Alice’s efforts to be the perfect wife, Joe soon reveals a penchant for being hopelessly unfaithful. When a notorious indiscretion with a female colleague forces Joe to transfer to New York, Alice’s life turns upside down. As Joe continues to sneak around, and her best friend’s beau offers a tempting glimpse of what real love could be like, Alice must decide how much Cinderella she can take before her deepest desires win out—and if she can summon up the courage to find real happiness on her own.
Delicious, witty, and packed with sparkling sex appeal, To Have and To Hold is an unputdownable read that will have you rooting out loud for its endearing heroine. A #1 bestseller in Britain, this latest tale from the beloved, utterly winning Jane Green proves that the search for true love doesn’t always end when someone dons a veil, and offers a lively, refreshing take on modern marriage.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In bestselling British novelist Green's sixth novel, a less-than-perfect London marriage disintegrates stateside. Alice loves her husband, the dashing Joe Chambers, even though he works late and travels a lot he can be so wonderful (when he's around) and she still can't believe he picked mousy little her. (Of course, he transformed her into a blonde-highlighted, Jimmy Choo sporting sophisticate first.) Blind to Joe's incessant philandering even after an office sex act gets him banished to New York Alice accepts his guilt gifts and hopes for the best. She doesn't want to leave her London life, but she's always loved nature and the rustic life, so Joe buys, in addition to a Manhattan apartment, a house in fictional Highfield, Conn. As the prologue warns, it's not just any house; it belonged to (fictional) 1930s writer Rachel Danbury, whose novel The Winding Road blew the lid off the town with its saga of infidelities. "Does history repeat itself?" Of course! Green tracks, in great detail, Joe's further infidelities, Alice's dissatisfactions, their fights and reconciliations; she also dips into the POVs of Josie Mitchell (Joe's lover) and Emily, Alice's best friend. Alice is mostly sympathetic, but for someone who thinks of herself as "a post-feminist child of a feminist," she sure bends over backward to please the snake she married. The one plot twist, involving Emily and her beau, Harry, is sweet but predictable. Green's style relies heavily on exposition, and while her prose is clean, her story is padded kind of like one of those sexy bras that rat Joe likes. 6-city author tour.
Customer Reviews
To Have and to Hold
Enjoyed reading this book but I did find it a bit slow. Wish it had moved a little quicker, although it could have been that i couldn't stand Alice's jerk of a husband and he was so self absorbed that i was sick of reading about him, which would mean that it actually made it a good book. This was my first Jane Green book, I will read more of her books:)
Sad but true.
I brought the audio version of this book. I loved the narrator, she had a nice smooth voice. The story is sadly true of men that can't stay faithful. I thought it was good, but she could have left out some of the crap the husband did and went into more detail of the love story between Alice and Harry, instead it was stated that what happen between them was for another book. Don't say it if you aren't going to write one.