I like many different types of genres. I would have given this book five stars, if it weren't for the fact that I truly need to have HEA (Happily Ever After) endings. The ending of this book was bittersweet.
That being said, the book was riveting. It explored so many different topics - unrequited love, infertility, infidelity, single mother-hood.
The story starts off with an older woman and her therapist. It then flashes back to years earlier and tells the story of Marian, Adam and Delia (from all three characters perspectives). Marian and Adam meet when they are children. She falls in love with him when she is just a little girl and that love deepens as their bond deepens. She never tells him how she feels, and when they are older - he meets and falls in love with her cousin, Delia. Marian is heartbroken, but tries desperately to move on from a man who doesn't love her, and she tries to be happy for the both of them.
Fast forward: Adam and Delia have a happy marriage and things are going well, until Delia finds out that she cannot get pregnant. She falls into a depression that gets so extreme, she is forced to be hospitalized. On the night this happens, Adam and Marian are comforting each other, which leads to a night that wasn't supposed to happen.
Marian gets pregnant with Adam's child and after much debate, decides to keep the baby and hide the father's identity. Delia gets better and comes home. Thus, the struggle begins.
Marian struggles with being a single mother and loving a man she can't have. Delia struggles with her depression and the increasing distance she is feeling from her husband. And Adam struggles with his confusion and mixed emotions over a daughter he can't father and a wife he is starting to resent.
I recommend this book to book clubs because it has thought provoking questions following the end of the story, which are perfect for discussion.

I really love Anita Shreve's writing. It is poetic and flows so easily for me.
This book explores domestic abuse - back in a time when it wasn't spoken about.
Anita writes this book from the beginning - before the abuse - when the heroine meets the hero. And you can almost understand how someone can fall in love and then stay in a relationship after it becomes abusive.
Eventually the heroine leaves - and goes into hiding with her young daughter. The story unfolds from there