Titel: A Private Affair
Skrywer: Lesley Lokko
Uitgewer:Orion Books
ISBN: 978-1-4091-0173-4
Prys: R171.95
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Until a few weeks ago I had never heard of Lesley Lokko, probably because I seldom venture into the realm of chick lit. However, I was pleasantly surprised. In A Private Affair, Lokko introduces us to four women, each of whom is dealing with difficult pasts, fraught relationships and insecurities.
There is Meagan, the teenage runaway, who flees her abusive home, only to work her way off the streets and into the arms of Tom, a young army officer, about to be stationed abroad.
Abbey, groomed since childhood to be the perfect wife and mother, putting everyone else before her own dreams and desires, is harbouring a dark secret that threatens to tear her ordered life apart.
Sam is a beautiful and successful lawyer on her way to a bright future as a partner in her company’s law firm, yet scarred by her youth, having grown up as the awkward, ugly duckling of twins, constantly living in her sister’s shadow. Despite the success, she yearns to find love, and does, when she meets a handsome stranger on an idyllic holiday in Morocco.
Lastly there is Dani, a beautiful young woman, looking for love in all the wrong places. She falls in love with an army officer, Nick Beasdale, but there is no happy ending; the scarred Nick bears a dark side that simmers just beneath the surface and Dani is set to become another one of his victims.
Beyond the summery book cover Lokko’s novel takes many twists and turns as the story progresses, each more sinister and darker than the last, making this a little more than your average beach read. Lokko keeps the pace up-tempo by effortlessly switching location and character. The story spans continents as Lokko takes us on a journey from the plains of the Australian Outback to the cosmopolitan landscape of London’s Notting Hill, the war-torn streets of Freetown, Sierra Leone and an army base camp in Germany, to name a few. The characters she creates are overall well rounded and believable. I particularly enjoyed the fact that her focus was not the rich and famous, but rather four ordinary women and their personal trials and tribulations. Both Meagan and Abbey are army wives and the book deals quite extensively with the lifestyle and sacrifices these women make in order to love the men they do, which adds to the book’s relevance at a time when this is a reality for so many women with husbands serving in the armed forces. I also enjoyed the way in which the seemingly disparate lives of the characters link up halfway through the book, revealing another interesting dimension as the story hurtles to its dramatic conclusion.
Although A Private Affair won’t linger with you once you’ve read it, it is a thoroughly enjoyable and unputdownable book.