This was a mildly diverting listen in the car.

The surmise is that Mia is with Pete and thinks he's "the one" until she manages to fall over his phone in the night and sees a text from a mystery Liz. She reads it, it ends "xx" and she immediately jumps to the conclusion that he's having an affair. At which point she stops being an entirely rational human being and starts to act like a complete raving lunatic. She goes on the hunt for evidence of the affair, and duly finds some. And then does several more things that are designed to make Pete think the Liz has gone mad and is obsessed. Only the mad one here is most certainly Mia. She acts with the aim of driving a wedge between Pete & Liz, such that he come back to her and remembers how good they have been together and she retains her nice safe, cosy life with him at her side.

Several times I found myself thinking that she had well and truly lost the plot, that no man was worth this level of effort and would you want him back knowing he could have the affair in the first place. There's a twist in the tail, and the ending is entirely unresolved, which is an interesting approach, but seemed to work.

It's enjoyable chick lit rather than a great work of literature. But it certainly made the M6 marginally more enjoyable than it would otherwise have been. ( )

Sounds like fluffy chick-lit, smells like fluffy chick-lit, looks like fluffy chick-lit. However, my senses betrayed me on this one.

Mia is a grown up, in a grown up relationship, in a grown up world. Her sister is immature and childish, and has no idea what real love is. Relationships need work, and Mia is confident that the work she has given her relationship with Pete has completely cemented the fact that he is ‘the One’.

Until she finds a message on Pete’s phone that leads her to believe that Pete is cheating on her. As more and more signs appear, Mia finds herself on an increasingly bizarre downward spiral to infiltrate and destroy the woman who wants to steal her boyfriend away.

To Mia, Pete is not the villain, the other woman is the enemy, who has corrupted her wonderful boyfriend and seduced him into a world where he doesn’t belong nor does he want to belong to. It’s up to her to show him…..

His Other Lover is not chick-lit in the traditional sense. There are no ditzy humorous moments, no ‘feel good’ factor or life changing revelations. It’s a dark book, and Lucy Dawson has managed to crawl into Mia’s head perfectly. In doing so she brings us a scary thought – how far would you go to keep the one you love and keep your life on the perfect track?

The ending of this book is gripping, and leaves you with some unanswered questions (in a good way) and open to your own interpretation, which is part of its appeal.

One of my favourite books of 2011 and I’ll be keeping an eye on this author. ( )