THE HALF MOON by Mary Beth Keane

Novels about troubled marriages are a dime a dozen, but this one is better than most.  Malcolm is gorgeous and gregarious but is dishonest with Jess, his wife, about his plans for buying the Half Moon--the bar where he has worked for years.  Jess is a lawyer with staggering student loan debt whose fertility treatments have wiped out their savings.  While the bar is failing and they are struggling to make ends meet, Jess moves out.  She then becomes romantically involved with another lawyer who happens to have three kids in his custody.  Malcolm and Jess are two characters who are more than just flawed, but they happen to love each other, blemishes and all.  Malcolm shows his ethical backbone late in the novel, but where was his integrity when he lied to Jess about the terms of his agreement to buy the bar or when he came within an eyelash of having sex with one of his employees?  Plus, for someone who chats with almost everyone in town, he turns out to be completely oblivious to things that are happening right under his nose.  Jess’s moral compass is just as bad, if not worse.  She is a little more realistic about their financial plight, whereas Malcolm hopes their problems will just disappear on their own.  Despite their obvious imperfections, there is something about this estranged couple that drew me in, particularly when Jess starts comparing the faults of her lover to her husband’s and questions what it is she really wants.  Both Jess and Malcolm are intelligent people but extremely unwise, in both money matters and matters of the heart, and I had to keep reading to find out how they would resolve these issues.  Thank you to Book Club Favorites at Simon & Schuster for the free copy for review.