This is the kind of book you can easily read in between bits of life.

After finishing up a full-time job at netball and the Firebirds and before tackling the long to-do list that includes re-arranging the tupperware cupboard and sorting the winter and summer linen I picked it up and enjoyably ploughed through it in two days. The groceries and the drop-offs were squeezed in.

The War of the Wives is the first time I have read Tamar Cohen and I will search another out for a summer holiday read. (As I have alluded to I will be busy in domesticity for a few months.)

It’s one of those what-would-you-do type of books, especially if you believe you are actually married.

Say your husband of nearly three decades and the father of your three teenage children dies unexpectedly and you find out on the same day he had another wife and child?

And not only that but he’d been a bigamist for nearly 20 years and his other child was the same age as your youngest?

Some of the storyline is predictable, some definitely isn’t but what will resonate are some of the emotions and experiences Cohen has captured so convincingly, if not melodramtically, for female readers of the same ilk as the wives.

Eg: “It’s hard to be a mother sometimes, having to deal with all your children’s previous selves, as well as the people they are now.”  Or

“When I look back now, I question every decision, every motive. It’s exhausting, this constant rewriting of the past.” And

“What’s the worst thing that can happen, when the worst thing can happen has already happened?’

Enjoy snacking on this book, it’ll keep your appetite in check until you can sink your teeth into the next big read.