Last Couple Standing - Review

Idgie Says:

This is a book where you decide by the end of Chapter 2 that the main characters are making a very bad decision.  But their decision making process amuses the hell out of you. You know it'll be a train wreck, but you can't wait to stay on for the ride and see how it all plays out. 

Their interactions with their friends are amusing.  Their secret meetings in the kitchen over Golden Oreos are amusing. It all amuses, until they step out of their (and quite possibly your) comfort zone.

When you take a relationship that has no rough spots, and decide to fix what's not broken so it won't ever be broken,  things can sometimes go sideways.  The question is - if it does - can you get it back on track?

I tore through this book and loved all the snark and humor, but there were times it also made me uncomfortable.  

With so many feels going on, I definitely need to give it a strong recommendation.  I will say though, if you have extremely firm beliefs about how a marriage needs to be, the subject matter might overrun the humor for you.

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A couple determined not to end up like their divorced friends try a radical experiment—and get in way over their heads—in this hilarious, heartfelt novel from the author of We’re All Damaged.

The Core Four have been friends since college: four men, four women, four couples. They got married around the same time, had kids around the same time, and now, fifteen years later, they’ve started getting divorced around the same time, too. With three of the Core Four unions crumbling to dust around them, Jessica and Mitch Butler take a long, hard look at their own marriage. Can it be saved? Or is divorce, like some fortysomething zombie virus, simply inescapable?

To maximize their chance at immunity, Jessica and Mitch try something radical. Their friends’ divorces mostly had to do with sex—having it, not having it, wanting to have it with other people—so they decide to relax a few things. Terms are discussed, conditions are made, and together the Butlers embark on the great experiment of taking their otherwise happy, functional marriage and breaking some very serious rules.

Jessica and Mitch are convinced they’ve hit upon the next evolution of marriage. But as lines are crossed and hot bartenders pursued, they each start to wonder if they’ve made a huge mistake. What follows is sexy, fun, painful, messy, and completely surprising to them both. Because sometimes doing something bad is the only way to get to the heart of what’s really good.

Ballantine
March 20, 2020
Genre: Literary Satire