The Perfect Solution

The wife is always the last to know! Joanna Clifford's marriage was over long before her husband died in a car accident. He'd really only married her due to her aristocratic background and family mansion; he was rich but ascribed to climbing the highest echelons of society, which his money alone could not accomplish. While in honeymoon stage, Joanna has a horse riding accident and miscarries - result being she won't be able to have more children. This enrages social climbing hubby who kills the horse of said accident, despite it being a beloved pet she'd had since childhood. He then leaves Joanna and takes up with his mistress who bears him a child. When he and his mistress die in an accident, Joanna finds out he left everything to his daughter Polly and his mistresses death-bed wish, made to her asshole brother Marc, is that Joanna should have custody and bring up Polly. Joanna could hardly turn her back on the little girl, so she agreed to the request. Although that meant spending far too much time with Marc who made it abundantly clear that he saw Joanna as more than a surrogate mother for his niece. God knows what Joanna sees in Marc, who accuses her of being a gold-digger and other such nonsense, threatens her financially and thinks it's OK to burden her with Polly out of sheer guilt - like his sister was an angel, living with a married man and having his child....weird set up all round!

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Romance, Fiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.