The Big Love — Sarah Dunn

Alison Hopkins is firmly, undoubtedly, and undeniably in love. She and Tom live together, they send wedding gifts as a unit, and, most important, they're happy together-until the evening Tom goes out in the middle of a dinner party to buy some mustard and doesn't come back. He calls Alison to say that he has fallen back in love with his ex-girlfriend Kate, the kind of woman about whom men say rhapsodically, "She's like a drug." How can Alison compete with that? She had always feared that Tom's looks would land her in trouble-having a handsome boyfriend is like owning a white couch, an invitation to disaster.

But if Tom isn't Alison's Big Love, who is?

Alison is tempted to take her humiliation and whip it into 700 words for the weekly column she writes about relationships for the local paper. Instead, she decides to treat her newfound freedom as a gift-a shimmering portal to a whole new life, a whole new her. She risks a fling with her boss and makes the delightful discovery that "movie sex"-like that scene in Fatal Attraction, with the water running and the dishes in the sink-isn't a cinematic fiction.

But that is just the beginning of Alison's quest for The Big Love. Applying her restless intelligence to all the questions of the heart in the modern age-Is love, in fact, enough? Does an undefined-yet-presumably-meaningless amorous encounter always turn out to be a mistake? What on earth do you tell your mother?-Alison plumbs the depths and takes sight on the heights that love can lead to. With a sharp eye, a skeptical wit, and an insatiable appetite for bridging the gulf between men and women, Sarah Dunn offers up a delectable first novel that is hilarious and heartbreaking, touching and true.