[facebook]
[retweet]

One night of ill-judged passion changes a young mother’s life forever.

Tempting Fate explores infidelity through the prelude to the affair and the devastating consequences.

Gabby is sliding into middle age, feeling unattractive and invisible. So when Matt, a younger, handsome out-of-town business man shows her attention she is easily swept up in a flirtation. What begins as an innocent phone text affair – little more than friendship – becomes something more intense when her husband and family are away and she invites Matt to her home. Though Gabby convinces herself nothing will happen, it does. Her passion is all consuming but short lived. As soon as it is over she knows she’s made a dreadful mistake – one that results in a longed-for baby that she cannot possibly pass off as her husband’s.

Tempting Fate is a novel that grew on me. Green does a wonderful job of creating the middle class world of mothers whose children are growing up, whose husbands are ageing and for whom life has become predictable but unsettling. Gabby is likeable but perhaps a little too ordinary in the early chapters to be interesting. Green rounds out her character more in the latter chapters, but in the early scenes the texts she sends Matt and her conversations with her children did little to add interest to her character or the plot. As a consequence these were easy to skim. The set up for her brief encounter is perhaps too long and doesn’t necessarily build sympathy for Gabby. Yet once she discovers she is pregnant the story becomes much richer. The deterioration and break up of her marriage, and the introduction of her husband’s point of view, gives the story a new depth as Gabby begins to realise what she has lost – and what she has gained. 

In many ways Tempting Fate is an early-mid-life coming-of-age story. Green explores how women perceive themselves and how this is refracted by those around them. I found myself thinking of Gabby and some of Green’s insightful revelations about marriage and fidelity long after I’d finished.