Happens Every Day by Isabel Gillies

I read about this book in a quick blurb and picked it up mostly because I am a big fan of Law & Order: SVU and the author plays one of the detective's wives on the show. I admit - I was curious.

This book is a true story, chronicling Gillies' marriage as it disintegrates unexpectedly. Seemingly happily married, she and her husband move to Ohio with their two sons, and within a year of their settling in, her husband has an affair and decides to leave her. She tells the story with equal parts regret, sadness, hindsight, and triumph, making it a very compelling read. It often felt like I was reading a long email from a close friend who was catching me up on her life. Gillies is very accessible and many of the comments she made about herself both big (she was always trying to make everyone around her feel comfortable) and small (she was going to say yes every time she was offered a glass of water) reminded me of myself.

There were aspects of this book that were hard to read, since she seemed so familiar and her marriage seemed similar to mine in some ways - she and her husband were not afraid to argue with each other, for example. And she never expected this to happen in her life - it came at her irreparably with scarce warning. I vacillated between feeling superior, enumerating the ways this could never happen to me, and feeling slightly terrified.

I read this in one big gulp and it definitely impacted my mood for the two days while I read it - not since Prozac Nation had I felt so connected to a book emotionally. Bravo to Gillies for courageously opening up to provide an extremely compelling narrative.