She applied the “Page 69 Test” to her new novel, The Pretend Wife, and reported the following:The Pretend Wife is about a woman whose irrepressible college boyfriend, Elliot Hull, works his way back into her life. In fact, he has a proposition -- he wants Gwen to pretend to be his wife for the weekend, to appease his dying mother. With her husband's encouragement, she goes and, along the way, falls in love with his wise mother, his kind sister, her smart kids -- and, well, Elliot Hull himself.... The novel ruminates on love and marriage, compromise and betrayal, what's real and what's not, and also dips into Gwen's childhood and the death of her mother.Read an excerpt from The Pretend Wife, and learn more about the book and author at Bridget Asher's website and blog.
Page 69 of the novel is an important one. Gwen and Elliot are in college in the whirlwind of their relationship -- this is before Gwen slaps Elliot in a bar and everything falls apart. They're standing in the shallow end of the university pool. Elliot is asking her about her mother's death, trying to get her to talk about it, but she isn't ready. She starts crying. This is the problem -- Elliot loves her too much, wants too much from her. He doesn't dole out love in little packets as her husband now does. With him, love is an ocean. This scene glimpses that ocean ...
Check out the complete list of books in the Page 69 Test Series.
--Marshal Zeringue
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