Three couples take it in turns to host a monthly dinner party.
Beth, Sarah and Marie have been friends forever. Now they are grown up, with busy lives, busy husbands, busy kids ... but they still find time to meet up over dinner once a month. A cosy, comfortable gathering of happy couples - or so they thought.
Until one night, someone brings along a last-minute guest whose wife has just left him.
Simon is standing on the doorstep in floods of tears. While the women do their best to console him, their husbands feel the need to mark their territory.
And as Simon becomes more involved with the group, his presence changes everything these three couples thought they knew about each other, leading to a final dinner party that no-one will ever forget.
Beth, Sarah and Marie are in their mid-forties and have been friends since school. Once a month, they and their husbands meet at one of their houses for a dinner party. When it's Beth and Chris' turn, he had forgotten to tell her that he had invited his friend, Simon. Simon and his wife had just split up (she had been cheating on him) and he was heartbroken. Beth has been exasperated with Chris for a while and it's all she can do to control herself. When Simon arrives, the three friends are drawn to him, something a couple of the husbands notice. As the months go on and the dinner parties continue to happen, Simon becomes more and more part of their lives and what is lacking in their own lives becomes apparent.
This was the fourth book I read by this author and I thought it was okay. I liked the writing style ... it's a quick easy read. It is written by an English author so there are some references and terminology I didn't get. It's written in third person perspective from different perspectives (the chapters are labeled so you know whose voice it is). In addition, Beth had won a dinner party hosted by a chef and leading up to that, a journalist would be interviewing everyone. At the end of each chapter, there is a short interview between the journalist and one of the seven main characters. As a head's up, there is swearing.
I wasn't crazy about the majority of the characters. The only ones I liked were Simon, Chris (though he seemed overly obsessed about dips), Duncan and Issy (Duncan's assistant). I don't know how these three women stayed friends all these years because they were usually nasty and snippy with each other. Tony, Sarah's husband, was an arrogant controlling jerk and I don't know why Sarah stayed married to him.
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