"We spend most of our lives wishing we were somewhere else or someone else... Always thinking the grass is greener on the other side. But it never is. It's still grass."
That line hit me while I was sitting in the Target parking lot, all three kids temporarily contained in their car seats, Sophie half-asleep and Lucas arguing with Emma about whose turn it was to hold the receipt. I actually paused the audiobook and just... sat there for a second. Because honestly? That's the whole book. And also kind of my Tuesday.
The Setup That Hooks You (And Then Makes You Squirm)
Ruth Jones — yes, the Gavin & Stacey Ruth Jones — wrote a debut novel about people making spectacularly bad decisions and then somehow made you care about every single one of them. Kate had a passionate affair with Callum when she was 22. He was married. It ended badly. Fast forward seventeen years: she's married to sweet, dependable Matt, has a daughter named Tallulah, and has built a genuinely good life. Callum's still with his wife Belinda up in Edinburgh, raising their kids. Everyone's moved on.
Until they haven't.
The moment Kate and Callum reconnect, you can feel the train wreck coming from miles away. And here's where I got frustrated — not because the writing is bad, but because these characters are SO good at lying to themselves. Kate convinces herself she deserves this. Callum tells himself it's different now. And poor Belinda and Matt are just... living their lives, completely unaware. I wanted to reach into my earbuds and physically shake someone.
Sharon Small Carrying This Book on Her Back
The narration. Sharon Small juggles Scottish, Welsh, Yorkshire, and Southern English accents across this cast and nails every single one. You always know who's talking without checking. Kate sounds different from Belinda who sounds different from Callum — and not just in accent but in energy. Kate's voice has this slightly breathless, reckless quality when she's around Callum, like she's already making the bad choice before she even opens her mouth. Belinda sounds grounded and warm, the kind of woman you'd want as your neighbor. Which makes everything that happens to her hit about ten times harder.
Small made this a genuinely pleasant listen even during the stretches where I wanted to throw my phone at the characters. That's a skill.
The Timeline Problem (aka Not Great for 47-Pause Listeners)
Here's my real gripe, and it matters a lot if you're a pause-heavy listener like me. The book jumps between past and present, and in the early chapters especially, it's not always immediately clear which timeline you're in. If Sophie screamed and I had to pause for ten minutes to deal with a yogurt-on-the-couch situation, coming back meant a few confused seconds of "wait, is this 2001 Kate or 2018 Kate?" The structure itself is not kind to interrupted listening.
Sharon Small does what she can to differentiate the timelines vocally, and by the midpoint I'd figured out the rhythm well enough that it stopped being an issue. But those first three hours required more sustained attention than I usually have to give. Not ideal for nap-time listening where you're also half-monitoring a baby monitor.
People You'll Love to Hate (And Hate to Love)
What Ruth Jones does well — and I think this comes straight from her screenwriting instincts — is that nobody here is purely a villain. Even when Kate is making choices that made me physically cringe in the school pickup line, you understand WHY. The pull of "what if" is painfully real. And Callum isn't some cartoonish seducer; he's a regular guy who's bored and nostalgic and weak in a very ordinary way. Which is somehow worse?
Belinda's storyline gutted me. Matt's quiet, oblivious decency gutted me. Jones builds genuine empathy for everyone in this mess, and that's the book's biggest strength by far. Girl, Woman, Other hit me the same way — a huge cast of women making messy, imperfect choices, and somehow I ended up fiercely invested in every single one of them.
But — and this kept it from being a favorite — some heavier themes get raised and then kind of... glossed over. There are moments involving emotional manipulation that felt like they deserved way more careful handling than a few pages and a scene change. Jones skims the surface of some really dark water and then paddles away, and that left me unsatisfied. Like she had something important to say and then pulled back.
Worth Sitting in Your Car For?
Did this book change my life? No. Did it keep me in my car an extra fifteen minutes three nights running while my husband texted "are you coming inside?" Yes. Sharon Small's performance elevated it from fine to genuinely enjoyable, and the central question — is the grass actually greener? — stuck with me longer than I expected it to.
It's not a comfort read exactly. There's too much infidelity-related anxiety for that, and I spent half the book slightly stressed on Belinda's behalf. But the ending felt earned rather than forced, which I appreciated. Not groundbreaking, but sometimes you don't need groundbreaking. Sometimes you need a story that reminds you the messy, yogurt-covered life you already have might actually be the right one.
Perfect for anyone who's ever idly wondered "what if" about an old flame and needs a 10-hour reminder of why that door should stay firmly closed. Skip if infidelity storylines are a hard no for you, or if you need to actually like your protagonists to enjoy a book.
