The Affair: a Novel

Previously published as The Perfect Happiness

Wonderfully wise Santa Montefiore will capture your heart with this "bittersweet and thought-provoking"* novel about a modern wife who must ask herself, Would I risk everything for love?

A wife who has forgotten her own beauty and allure. A distant, distracted husband. A smart, candlelit dinner party, witty conversation, and a charmingly rugged vineyard owner from South Africa. So begins Santa Montefiore?s powerful and poignant new novel in which a woman who finds herself in a common predicament must confront the most unlikely aspects of herself.

"I hope you don?t mind my writing to you," begins the first e-mail bestselling children?s book author Angelica receives from Jack. Surely it can?t do any harm to indulge in a mild flirtation. After all, she wouldn?t risk her stable marriage and the happiness of her treasured children. But things don?t stop at an e-mail, and when Angelica goes to Cape Town for a book tour, her affair with Jack begins in earnest. On their last day together, he makes a stunning confession, and now everything Angelica thought she knew about love and passion, safety and experience, right and wrong are entirely upended once again.

A tender book about the true meaning of love and happily ever after, The Affair is for any woman who has ever looked up from her steady, secure life and secretly wondered "what if . . ."