Difficult Husbands (a difficult read) by Mary DeLaszlo

What They Say.....Three friends. One surprise inheritance. And the perfect plan to deal with troublesome husbands at Christmas time…

Newly divorced Lorna is struggling to adjust to life on her own. When she discovers that her beloved godfather has left her the grand (and crumbling) Ravenscourt House in the heart of Sussex, she soon has a project on her hands.

Nathan sells delicious goodies at Mulberry Farm. When he meets Lorna at a Christmas market, neither of them can ignore the chemistry. But as they get to know one another, Lorna wants to know one thing – is he after her or the house?

Together with Gloria – whose marriage to alcoholic Adrian has hit rock bottom, and Rosalind – struggling to deal with her womanising husband Ivan, the three friends hatch a plan. They’ll ditch their difficult husbands at Ravenscourt House and enjoy stress-free Christmases with their families. 

But nothing is ever that simple…

What I Say....I generally try to stay positive in my reviews.  But this book was really difficult to get through.

Newsflash, these aren't difficult husbands, they are jerks that should have been left long before the story started.  A non-functioning alcoholic, a guy who has affairs and brings his mistresses home for Christmas, and a man who went on "happy pills" (apparently, the author is quite opposed to anti-depressants), which then made him so emotionless (?) that he left his family for a younger woman.   Yeah, I'd say they bypassed "difficult" a while back.

So the only way that these women can spend the holiday concentrating on their adult children is to get the husbands to stay at Ravenswood, the large English estate that Lorna has just inherited. How their physical distance matters is uncertain, since the husbands are all that these women can think or talk about.

Normally, I love chick lit that involves inheriting large English estates (see A Good Year for Roses), but this was pretty slow, painful reading.  The women appeared to be hopeless and elderly, although they kept talking about how much younger they were than their husbands.

The daughter's pregnancy with a man who is struggling with infertility with his WIFE was a dead end storyline.  I didn't feel any sympathy for her at all, and the boyfriend was another "difficult husband" who had to call his wife when he was overwhelmed by the premature arrival of his daughter.  If I was his wife, I would have happily come to the hospital and beaten him over the head.

Depressing stories, unsympathetic characters, even the twist involving Nathan, the (surprise!) rich baker who lives with his mom, didn't do anything to save this book.