THE LIES WE CALLED LOVE

THE LIES WE CALLED LOVE Genre >Intimate, painful, seductive, emotionally devastating, tense, morally complicated, and ultimately empowering. Sometimes the greatest heartbreak is not discovering that someone betrayed you-it is discovering that the love you are grieving may never have existed in the way you believed. >Claire Bennett, 34, has spent eleven years married to Eric Bennett, the dependable man she once believed had saved her from the instability of her childhood. Their marriage is not openly unhappy. That is what makes Claire's loneliness harder to explain. Eric is loyal, responsible, affectionate in practical ways-but somewhere between careers, routines, postponed holidays, fertility struggles, and years of conversations that never seem to reach anything deeper, Claire begins to feel invisible. Then she meets her charismatic new boss, Henry Vale, 41. Henry notices everything Eric no longer seems to notice. The change in her perfume. The way she laughs when she is nervous. The novel she keeps hidden inside her desk drawer. The loneliness she refuses to admit exists. What begins as emotional intimacy becomes an affair. For nearly a year, Claire lives two lives: devoted wife at home, secret lover in hotel rooms and borrowed apartments. She hates herself for it. But she cannot stop. Then Eric begins to suspect something. Without telling Claire, he hires a private investigator. The investigator is Mara Vale. Henry's wife. Claire's entire world collapses when Eric walks into a room and discovers Claire with Henry-while Mara stands beside him.