The Idea of Him by Holly Peterson

 Mary Crawford is a once aspiring screenwriter turned successful public relations executive, mother of two young children, and wife of a hotshot magazine editor whose power base spans the worlds of finance, fashion, culture, entertainment, and society. At 34, she finds herself at a crossroads: between the office and her home, her life has become an endless rotation of people pleasing-whether pulling rabbits out of hats for her mogul boss, entertaining advertisers and phony A-listers for her husband's magazine, or making elaborate costumes for children's school plays. At least, that is, until she meets a head turning, traffic stopping beauty at the bar of the famed Four Seasons Grill Room-where many of the novel's players regularly convene-and shortly thereafter finds the same woman and her husband in an apparently compromising position in her own apartment.

And so begins the story of two very different women bound by similar missions-to uncover the crimes and betrayals of various men in their lives and finally put their own interests front and center. For Mary this ultimately means leaving a husband who is ideal in theory but not in practice, and deciding to risk security for self-fulfillment and a new life on her own. Like so many women, Mary fell for the man she married when she was in her twenties only to realize years later that it wasn't him she fell for as much as it was the idea of him-the idea of a savior who would protect and provide and ferry her from her past into the future. But the guy who seemed so right at the time turned out to be nothing more than a fantasy.

I found this book to be a very slow starter, and then it started to pick up for me, raising my hopes for this book.  What I ended up with was a lot of soul searching about should haves, could haves and would haves and so many twisted story plots I lost count.  If the action towards the end of this story had been spread out more, capturing my attention by chapter 3, I have a feeling I would have finished it feeling more accomplished.  Instead I finished feeling relief that it was over and confused as to what I had just encountered. 

Allie realizes that maybe her choice for a husband wasn’t her wisest choice.  Both have a successful highly stressful job, they have children together but it seems he doesn’t have the same amount of faithfulness to his mate that she does.  It felt to me that she had always question her decision but went with him because of her daddy.  Once she caught him in a guilty position, her world started to unravel and she found that she never did really see her life the way it was.  Did she fall in love with the idea of what a marriage could give her instead of falling in love with the man she married?

Could she have made better choices in life?  Was her old boyfriend the one she was meant to be with?  Since she couldn’t turn back time, she had to figure out way to keep moving forward.  This was when other characters and plots started popping up and I have to admit I didn’t like all of the characters.  Jackie was the one character that made this book interesting.  She had so many twists and views and watching her story unfold was the thing that helped me finish this book. 

I fear other than the slowness in connecting with the story; I found too many characters with too many important roles in this book.  It should have been an interesting read from the way the plot is formed, but with the amount of characters, the drag time in the beginning and the predictability.  It isn’t uncommon to pick up a book these days and find an unhappy woman who married for the wrong reasons being tempted by another man who shows tenderness and compassion, but with the extra plot twists in this book, it could have been a great deal better.