Julie's Review: The Unbreakables

Author: Lisa Barr
Series: None
Publication Date: June 4, 2019
Publisher: Random House
Pages: 352
Obtained: Great Thoughts, Great Readers Book Salon
Genre:  Contemporary Fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
Bottom Line: Great escapism
Grab, Just get it at the library, or Remove from your TBR list? Grab

Summary: The worst birthday ever might just be the gift of a lifetime… It’s Sophie Bloom’s forty-second birthday, and she’s ready for a night of celebration with Gabe, her longtime, devoted husband, and her two besties and their spouses. Dinner is served with a side of delicious gossip, including which North Grove residents were caught with their pants down on Ashley Madison after the secret on-line dating site for married and committed couples was hacked. Thirty-two million cheaters worldwide have been exposed…including Sophie’s “perfect” husband. To add insult to injury, she learns Gabe is the top cheater in their town. Humiliated and directionless, Sophie jumps into the unknown and flees to France to meet up with her teenage daughter who is studying abroad and nursing her own heartbreak. After a brief visit to Paris, Sophie heads out to the artist enclave of Saint-Paul-de-Vence. There, for the first time in a long time, Sophie acknowledges her own desires—not her husband’s, not her daughter’s—and rediscovers her essence with painful honesty and humor, reawakening both her sensuality and ambitions as a sculptor. As she sheds her past and travels the obstacle-filled off beaten path, Sophie Bloom is determined to blossom. Allowing her true self to emerge in the postcard beauty of Provence, Sophie must decide what is broken forever...and what it means to be truly unbreakable. ~amazon.com


Review: What would you do if you found out your marriage was a sham? That your husband was a serial cheater? How would you confront him? For Sophie her daughter's distress and heartbreak comes with good timing, so she can flee to France to try to forget and try to find herself. Her first priority though is to help her daughter, Ava, get through whatever emotional toil she's going through.

She leaves Ava to go and look to reinvent herself. She finds a small town in France and sets up shop there in a hotel. She experiments with her sexuality and gets back into the art scene. I love the art aspect of this novel. I’m sure I order to write Sophie the way she did, she researched what it takes to be a sculptor. I loved the intricacies that were woven in this story.

Here's my thing, there was nothing wrong with Sophie in the first place that she needed to run away and find herself, reinvent herself. Sure it made a fun novel but how many women have the means to really do this. They can't flee to France or Europe to rediscover themselves. Sophie just needed to put herself first which is hard when you are a mother and wife. We are nurtures by nature so putting ourselves first goes against our DNA.

This is a good, quick read. You will feel for Sophie and want to find herself. Her relationship with her daughter is one of the best things of the novel.