The Quiet Between

by Jona Leigh

The Quiet Between is a raw, intimate portrait of a marriage unraveling. Cameron and Sloane’s love once ran deep, but years of silence and growing distance have turned them into strangers. When Cameron admits he has sought comfort in another woman, the fragile threads of their marriage break, leaving Sloane devastated by heartbreak and betrayal.

As Sloane throws herself into her work as a doctor, she battles both the shadows of her past and the silence that pushed them apart. Cameron, caught between guilt and denial, holds tightly to excuses for his choices, yet cannot sever his bond to the woman he left behind. As grief deepens and harsh truths close in, both must face the scars of their past and the hope of what still lingers between them.

The Quiet Between explores betrayal, heartbreak, and the lingering scars of silence. It asks whether love can survive once trust is broken, or if some wounds are too deep ever to heal.

Genres: Second Chance

321 pages, Kindle Edition

Published November 8, 2025

Reviews

[Rachael*Caribbean*girl*bibliophile]

Note to self

Why is my GR timeline suddenly filled with cheating redemption books 😭 do I need to block ppl 🫣 how do I stop these books from appearing?? it's depressing me😭😭😭


girllllll if he cheated once, there'll be another "Evie" in a couple years time he'll just hide it better..... you're welcome 🤗

now back to figuring out if I need to clean up my friends list I'm sick of seeing these damn cheating books wth is going on 🤦🏽‍♀️

[JillyB · Rating 5 out of 5]

The husband cheats on his wife of 10 years. And yet I didn't hate him. Now wait a minute, before you yell at me. I am not saying I didn’t rage at him or that I thought he was justified. However, I will say I understood where his cheating came from. Initially, I was angry right along side his wife when he admitted to the affair, and that he also had feelings for the ow. The wife rightfully so, kicked him out immediately. They share a 5 year old daughter, and he is a doting father. Plus, his family loves Sloane, his wife. They were outraged at Cameron as well. But then Jona took us farther into their marriage. As we read about their day to day life, it was clear that his wife had been pushing him away for years. She had always been emotionally reserved, even cold, but Cameron fell deeply in love with her despite this. He knew she kept things locked away, but he loved the parts of her he could have. But as their marriage went on the distance got bigger. He came out in arguments. More arguments than ever before. When counseling was suggested, it was dismissed. And heartbreaking of all was Cameron begging for those 8 letters, that husbands and wives say to each other on a regular basis. Not even getting that, Cameron got lost. There just happened to be another lost soul who was there to listen, to share, to love…..sadly it was not his wife.


This story is the case of something bad turning into something good.

Sloane was living a half life due to childhood trauma. Trauma she locked away, and with it she locked away parts of her. The most vulnerable parts, the parts that hurt the most. Cameron accepted this for over 10 years. So she kept pushing and pushing and in the end she was justified locking parts of herself away, because he left her too. She wastes no time filing for divorce, but they still need to coparent. It was clear to Cameron right away that although he felt unloved in his marriage, he absolutely loved her. He knew then that he could not give himself fully to another as he had already given his heart to his wife.

The healing for this couple is by no means quick. They separate and while separated Sloane suffers an emotional, mental setback. It is Cameron who moves in to be by her side for months. Supporting her.Helping her heal. Even after the divorce is finalized, he is there emotionally. He gives her space to heal from her trauma, but at the same time lets her know that he will never be far away. For Sloane, the divorce was the best thing to happen to her. She needed a catalyst to finally seek out answers to her questions, therapy for her trauma, and letting go of those not deserving of her energy. I am not really sure if she would have ever gotten the help she needed without losing the one man she loved. And yes, she loved Cameron.

I wish I could do a better job expressing the emotional impact the story had on me. But my review is unable to do it justice. I can’t capture the little things that add up to mean so much more. I would have been devastated had this couple not made it back to each other.

I realize I haven’t given too many actual details of the story, so I will try and give a brief overview of some of the characters.

Sloane and Cameron are the h and H. They are both doctors and work at the same hospital. They have a sweet 5 year old daughter.

Sloane has minimal to do with her family. Cameron isn’t sure why, because Sloane doesn’t share. You will find out more about her family after her trauma is revealed.

Cameron…has a wonderful supportive family consisting of his mom, sister Caroline and older brother Caleb. Caroline and Caleb both work at the same hospital, in fact Caroline is high up in the administration. This family does not excuse Cameron’s cheating at all!!! They let him know point blank what they think of him and what he did…as does his mom. So this was very refreshing. They pull no punches.

Evie the ow….He breaks it off with her around the 25% mark, but that doesn’t mean he is with her for 25 % of the book. Evie does show up throughout and tries to start some problems (not bunny boiler level) She loves Cameron as he one of the first men to treat her kindly and lovingly. He never told her he loved her but he definitely indicated that she was probably his future. He ends up telling her that he was wrong and it will always be Sloane. Sloane gets to have a couple of confrontations with Evie, and you will be clapping as she does!

There is a possible om in the story. He ends up actually being a friend in the end.

Finally, Jona gives us a beautiful epilogue many many years in the future. Where we hear about Sloane and Cameron’s renewed love and life.

[Beeg Panda · Rating 5 out of 5]

NTS: Beeg, TBC
My best 2025 read.
I'm already re-reading.
1st time on Wattpad.
Now on KU

Heroine - Sloane
Hero - Cameron
Both drs at the same hospital.
Ten years of marriage and two years of dating

ow - Evie
om - Gabriel - not really a contender but the H thought he was. 🤡😁



Her voice was tight. “You’ve been gone from this house for a month. That says enough, doesn’t it?”

“The reason I left was because we kept fighting, Sloane. I’m so tired of it.”…love wasn’t enough anymore. We weren’t working. The fight we once had, the spark that used to pull us back from the edge, was gone. And maybe, if we were honest, it had been gone for a long while…
“I’m in a relationship with someone. It’s something real and deep between us. It’s getting serious.” She makes me happy again. And I’m going to see where it goes.”

“Did you fuck her while you were still living with me, Cameron?”
“Yes.” My voice was barely audible, the weight of guilt

He had been with her for three months before he even moved out of our home. While I still believed his heart belonged to me. He fucked her, then sneaked back into our bed in the middle of the night and lay beside me. He spent time with her, happy and carefree, then came home with a frown and snapped at me. He couldn’t wait to be with her, but couldn’t wait to get away from me.

“You blamed the fights, Cam, but you’d already slept with her before you left. Just admit it. You left for her.”
“They were all the same reason, Sloane. We weren’t together anymore—not in any way that mattered. It stopped being a marriage, or even a relationship, when we barely spoke, barely looked at each other.
I could not deny it. Yes, I did. I still loved her.

Her eyes finally lifted to meet mine, distant and cold. “But I’m letting you go. I’m not going to argue, and I’m not going to fight for you. I’m certainly not holding onto any hope that you’ll come back. From now on, our relationship will be about co-parenting. Nothing more.” “You don’t live here anymore.”

I heard her say quietly, “I’ll file for divorce. And I’m taking everything I have the right to. But custody of Harper will be mine. We’ll figure out the visitation.”
But you can’t simply come and go from this house whenever you please. It’s not appropriate anymore...”
“This is the final chapter of our story, Cameron. Twelve years closing quietly.” Her eyes met mine, glistening but holding back tears. “I wish you nothing but a good life.”


ten years of marriage and two years of dating

Next morning:

We only had one car, and Cameron had taken it since I had the house.
As I stepped outside, Cameron was already there, standing by the car, giving me a sad attempt at a smile. I stared at him, confused. “Why are you here?” “Coming to pick you up, like always,” he said simply.
I shook my head, firm and resolute. “From now on, I’m going by myself. We have nothing left between us, Cam. It’s time to let it go. Besides, what will your girlfriend think if you’re still driving your wife to work?”

“You’ve been crying,” he said quietly. He reached to touch my cheek, but I dodged. “Your eyes are so swollen.” I threw my hands in the air, my voice sharp with disbelief. “For God’s sake, Cam. You told me you cheated on me, that you cared about her deeply. That you’re going to be with her. You left me, Cam. And you’re surprised that I cried?” He flinched, just barely, but enough for me to see. “Honestly... yeah. I never thought you’d care enough to let yourself cry.”

🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
I walked out of my mother’s house feeling like the world’s biggest bastard. I told her everything
I was banned from my mom’s house—not until Sloane had healed, not until Sloane herself said it was okay.
“Do you still love Sloane?” Without thinking, the words slipped out, “I still do. Very much.”

I knew I would hurt her, but for the life of me, I never imagined it would be this much.

“Tell me you love me,” I snapped. “Twelve years, Sloane. And I can count on one damn hand how many times you said it. I’ve said it a hundred times more, over and over. So fucking say it. Say it to me now!” But she didn’t.
..every part of me wanted to run back, fall to my knees, and beg her to love me? Because my heart was shattered beneath it all. But I wanted to be happy. Evie could make me happy.
Evie was everything Sloane wasn’t. She was sensitive and soft, her emotions worn openly, easy to read…

🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
Evie was stirring something on the stove when I slipped up behind her, wrapping my arms around her waist and pressing a kiss to her neck. “Hey, gorgeous,” I murmured.
“I’m getting a divorce.”
Then I kissed her again, slower this time. “I’m a single man now, Evie. And I’m completely yours.” That made her pause. “I thought you were already mine...” “I was. I am. But now the marriage is nothing more than a piece of paper. We don’t have to hide ourselves anymore.”
I loved how responsive she was—how every touch drew a sound, a reaction, a desperate need.
I had whispered Sloane’s name in the aftermath of my ecstasy. It came out in anger, sharp and unguarded, but it didn’t matter. It was still her name.



🤡LOL🤡



“…tore a huge, searing hole in my own heart where she {Sloane} used to be. And I knew—God, I fucking knew—she was the only one who could ever fill it.

Cameron straightened from where he’d been leaning against his car,
Behind me, I heard Caleb say, “She asked me for a ride earlier, Cam. I’m sorry.”
“I can’t be in the same space as you, Cam. Especially alone in the car, just the two of us. I don’t know how to handle the hurt when you show up to get me in the morning, right after you’ve spent the night with her. And I’m not sure I can handle you dropping me off only to drive straight to her afterward. I’m not ready for that. So please... just leave me alone.”


🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
About the h, before:

I tried to understand her. I tried to accept that she never said she loved me.
Whenever something was wrong, she wouldn’t talk to me about it. Instead, I got a cold shoulder. Sometimes for days. Sometimes for weeks. Until she was ready, on her terms, for us to talk again

“I don’t need you right now, Cam. I just need to deal with this alone.”

“I can’t, Cam. I need space right now.” He exhaled softly; the sound was more sad than hurt. “I’m here if you need me. I love you.” I closed my eyes and didn’t say a word.

But I didn’t know how to let him in. I didn’t know how to be vulnerable. I tried. I really did. Tried to say what I felt. But the words never came out right. Or never came at all.

He’d open his tired eyes, reach for me, gently brush his fingers across my cheek, and whisper, “I’m here, baby. Whenever and wherever you need me.” He said it every time. With patience, with love. Until one night, he didn’t say it anymore.

And I withdrew deeper. Until we couldn’t find each other anymore.

...with me, he always had to guess. Affection was a language I never quite learned to speak, and somehow, the words I love you were too hard to say. I bet she never made him second-guess everything. Unlike me.

…Just keep everything bottled up.” “It’s my thing.” “Yeah, I know. But maybe... you need to let it out sometimes. Before it builds up too much and explodes, and when it does... it might be too hard to gather the pieces.”…

couples counseling again?” I let out a long sigh. “That didn’t work, did it? I tried so many times. We went once, then she refused to come back.”

Lately, I’d come to realize I’d grown so comfortable with Cameron that I stopped really considering his feelings. I always assumed he’d come back.

🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
Through gritted teeth, I said, “I’m going to spend the entire day with my daughter. Even an entire week if I want to, if Sloane lets me. And if you’re trying to stop me, Evie, then you’ve seriously misunderstood your place in all of this.”

“I know you’re thinking of her. You still love her, Cam. I know you tried with me, but you can’t. You just can’t let go.”


🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
Somewhere along the line, I stopped seeing it. Stopped seeing her {Sloane}. The way she uniquely showed her love….. How she cared in small, thoughtful ways…. How she knew what I needed before I even spoke it aloud. And so many more I had forgotten…..
The things I once understood, things I had cherished, were gone—lost beneath my insecurities. My selfishness. I was desperate for my love to be returned equally, for her love for me to be proclaimed loudly.

🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
“And I’m so sorry, Evie.” I closed my eyes and shook my head, the guilt pressing down. “This is all my fault. I pulled you into something I hadn’t let go of. I hurt you, I know that. But I can’t... I can’t keep doing this with you.”

“You were right that I never really left her. That I couldn’t let go. That I still love her. And that even though I tried with you... I couldn’t stop loving her.”

“I won’t ever be able to love you.”

“I’m leaving now, Evie,” I said softly. “I hope someday you’ll find someone who can love you the way you deserve.”

🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
H about h:

I watched her from a distance, fully aware that this was all I was allowed now.

I knew I wasn’t hiding it well anymore. The longing had found its way onto my face. No matter how I tried to stay grounded, I kept drifting, always gravitating back to her.


🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
My phone rang and rang again, almost nonstop.

“What are you doing here, Evie?” I said under my breath. She looked up at me, her expression hopeful, almost pleading. “You haven’t been answering my calls, Cam. I just want a chance to talk.” “There’s nothing left to talk about, Evie. It’s over.”

God, this woman was shattered because of me. “Please, Evie,” I said softly. “Just let me go.”

…..without warning, she stepped forward and slipped her arms around me, looking up at me with that heart-wrenching desperation.





🌱🌱🌱🌱🌱
2 negatives, not enough to deduct any stars:
1. Gabriel turns out to be a phony pos
2. Chapters with overlapping timelines

[Chronic Chihuahua · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm Shocked It Wasn't Sloan Who Walked Away From These Communally Abusive Cunts. Nobody In This Unit Emotionally Supported Sloane, They All Supported Him, And Criticised Her.

I really hope you aren't as gaslit and abused like Sloane was and allowed to excuse it and have everyone sympathise with him like Cam got.

Its so toxic reading him Fuck Evie and tell himself he loves Sloane.

Ew, you have no standards for your men.

Fuck I'd rather slit my throat than accept the Love from a man who can slip inside another woman, while bonded with me.

Oh that needs ego death, not a depression march that everyone saves him from. Anita bans him and the hes back the next week.

They all abuse the fact she has no Emotional Support Network.

I want to break all their faces, especially Dean and Ben, who normalise what he did, the most.

And pretending Cam is a good father is toxic. Harper doesn'r evaporate when you are at your mistresses, not going home, asshole.

I'm nearly 40 and to this day, no therapist has been able to convince me that someone who is off having a romantic fantasy, gives an Active fuck about their kids.

Like at all.

If you are still worried about romance when your kids are there, wow, you stunted selfish child.

Thus Abusive Cunt Has Her Apologising For His Long Term Toxic Choices, Isn't She Traumatised Enough? And DEAN, Letting Cam Pretend He Fought For His Marriage, Enabler, Misogynist.

Dean needed headbutt for giving Cam the time to process his abuse, excusing it. Cam literally stated that he UNDERSTOOD her love language but wanted to invalidate it as a Love Language and abuser Dean lets him.

There is no Male Loneliness Epidemic, juat asshole men and women frustrated that the People Pleaser refuse to take mutual blame.

He was a cunt.

He abused her.

He reframe her Love Language until it broke her.

Oh, I hate Pick Mes like you, lets see the excuses you provide the rest of your cheating abusers.

Needed him to suffer and instead he got to distract himself with self sacrifice.

Gawd I needed more of him shaking and realising but Dean and Ben save him and it angers me.

Wow, he came in all Therapy Talk, ready to butter all the "just get therapy" privileged people.

Wow, hes so gross how he blames her for dicking around and she cries and lets him.

What an abuser.

I feel sorry for the women in your life if you can see his cognitive choices as anything but abuse.

The cunt abandoned her.

Fuck. HIM.

And the Epilogue just sealed it for me, him getting to enjoy his life of Gaslighting her.

You see, I enjoy forcing old men to reflect on their toxicity.

And he is a toxic arsehole, abusing two women and telling himself he treated them both right.

I love No Contacting the Old Men in my life until they admit their failing as youngsters.

I loath letting them feel fine about abuse.

Fuck the way he abuses her yrauma tk get pussy again.

Fuck and they way Ben and Dean encourage him to impose on her again when shes still struggling.

I genuinely loath these people.

Not once have they been on Sloans side just blaming her for hin dipping dick.

I hate when a cheater talks to their victim about forgiving themselves.

I swear Therap rwally just is Patriarchial Conversion Therapy isn't it, forcing her to take his shit.

Omce a dick dipper, always a dick dipper until you admit you were always waiting to Dip Dick.

Poor Sloan, Poor Harper and Poor Nicholas always waiting for him to leave.

Gawd all the Daddy Dick Mes giving him glowing reviews, wow, he was touching two women the gross cunt.

You gross enabling cunt.

AND What is it with the Misogyny in cheating romances. He gets to bitch about her behind her back, for months, dragging Sloane down to Evie, for months, but he would never discuss any of his relationship with Evie, with Sloane.

Always the performance of Love, when you respected Evie more. And I hate the Author pretending he saved her, he fucking manipulated and abused her after socially abused her with Evie, for months.

The first thing you do when he walks out is change all the pictures in the house to you and the kids, fuck him, and then redecorate so that the home never feels familiar to him, and then you demand he accept the position of "emotional whipping boy" that lets you get out that trauma.

Nah he just made sure he was fundamental in her emotional regulation, and i hate him.

He touched her after touching Evie, you burn that fucking bed to dust and you film it and you glorify it.

Ew, Evie's germs are all over Sloanes house, without her consent.

So ableist for people with weak immune systems, bringing contaminants from your bit on the side that Sloane doesn't know where she's been.

[Tmstprc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read on Wattpad.

This story is more about a marriage in trouble than a cheating husband. His cheating really is a symptom of their toxic marriage. Her abusive childhood has left her with huge issues that bleed into their marriage. Rather than get the help she needs, she shuts down or strikes out. Their marriage is a mess.

[Amee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, The Quiet Between is a deeply emotional story of the dissolution of a marriage, as well as a severe mental breakdown induced by PTSD from past trauma. Jeez, this one hit home for me, somewhat mirroring my past and the lasting effects unchecked trauma can have with all your current relationships-spouse, parents, siblings and even your own children. Hayden essentially numbed herself to survive and never learned coping mechanisms and kept numbing, closing her off. Author seems very well versed on the effects of PTSD from trauma and I appreciated her for not pulling her punches on the messiness. There is cheating involved, Christopher and Hayden divorce, I loved the backbone she managed to hold, but as you read more about their marriage, though nothing justifies cheating, you see it’s a symptom of so much wrong in both of them. It did lose a star because the pacing slowed about 1/2 through and my attention waned a bit. The OW is relentless but not over the top. Overall, redemption was long fought and won.

[Serialbookstarter:Marla · Rating 3 out of 5]

This opens with the H confessing to his wife of 12 years that he’s been screwing around for the last 3 months. It brings a little angst in the beginning.

[E · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at 4%.

Sorry but if you think your marriage is not working, sit and have a fucking talk like an actual adult. Then leave and put your miserable dick wherever you want. It’s as simple as that.


Even if you have an emotionally closed off spouse, cheating on her doesn’t bring in the emotional support. So please, just stop excusing low life people’s decision to cheat.

[Izzie d]

He cheats.
Their breakup is blamed basically on the heroine's lack of ability to open up.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Emotional

A journey of finding one's self, fixing what's broken and coming out on the other side. Sloane and Cameron both had issues they needed to work on to finally be truly happy.

I am so glad I read this book.

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite book for 2025 ❤️❤️❤️❤️

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book follows Sloane and Cameron, a married couple who’ve been together for well over a decade and share a five-year-old daughter. Sloane has deep-rooted childhood trauma that’s shaped her entire personality. She’s emotionally closed off, struggles to express love, and often comes across cold — not because she doesn’t care, but because she’s learned to survive by shutting down. Cam has always known this about her. From the very beginning of their relationship, she’s been this way, and he chose her anyway.

Cam, on the other hand, has no trauma. He comes from a warm, supportive, emotionally healthy family who absolutely adore Sloane. His parents love her, his brothers love her, and they treat her like one of their own. In fact, one of the most painful aspects of the story is how disappointed and heartbroken Cam’s family is when they find out he cheated.

The book opens with one of the most gut-wrenching confession scenes I’ve ever read — Cam sits Sloane down and admits that he had an affair. And not a momentary lapse of judgment or a one-time mistake. He admits it was emotional, that there was a connection, that he kept going back to the woman, Evie, again and again. He spent real time with her. He had clothes at her apartment. He let himself find silence and peace with someone else while Sloane was still at home fighting for a marriage she didn’t know was already crumbling.

It’s brutal. It’s honest. And it hurts, because Sloane may be emotionally reserved, but she loves deeply in her own way — and Cam’s confession rips her open.

They separate. They divorce. Sloane tells him to leave and not come back. She’s shattered, but true to her character, she barely lets herself cry.

Cam breaks things off with Evie fairly early on (around the 20% mark), and this is where the dynamic becomes very clear: Cam is the one who pursues Sloane, not the other way around. Once he realizes what he’s truly lost, he regrets everything. He wants his wife back. He wants his family back. He starts going to therapy. He tries to rebuild trust. He shows up — consistently, gently, repeatedly.

But Sloane needs space. She tells him she needs to learn how to exist without him, how to be her own person after years of not knowing how to express herself. She doesn’t jump into reconciling instantly. She takes time, goes to therapy, works on herself, and learns how to open up emotionally in ways she never could before.

And slowly — slowly — they find their way back to each other. As friends first. Then as something tender and hesitant. And finally as partners who actually understand each other.

By the end, they rebuild their relationship in a way that feels earned. She becomes more expressive. He becomes more patient. They fight for each other in ways they never managed before. Sloane becomes pregnant again, and the epilogue shows them happy and healthy with their children. The final time-jump epilogue shows them in their eighties, still married, still together, still choosing each other.

Evie appears a few times after the breakup — not in a romantic sense, but in a way that forces Sloane and Cam to confront the reality of what happened. But once Cam ends things with Evie, that door stays closed permanently.

Now for my personal thoughts:

I loved the writing. It’s emotional, reflective, and beautifully crafted. The author handles trauma, communication, and long-term relationships with painful authenticity.

But I still struggled with Cam. Yes, their marriage was dying. Yes, Sloane was hard to love at times. But she had always been that way, and he knew that when he married her. I couldn’t fully accept that he sought comfort elsewhere instead of ending the marriage first. The cheating scene wasn’t graphic, but the fact that he spent real time with the other woman, slept at her place, had clothes there… that made it hard for me to forgive him as a character.

I also feel like the story leans heavily into explaining Sloane’s trauma, while Cam gets a softer framing for his choices. And even though he takes accountability, I did wish — just a tiny bit — that Sloane had explored another connection too, if only to balance the emotional scale.

But despite all of that?
This book was powerful. Emotional. Intimate. Human.
I read it in huge, breathless chunks because the writing sucked me straight in.

I’ve read another book by this author and loved it, and this one only confirmed how talented she is.

[Sewster · Rating 4 out of 5]

All of the cheating books I’ve read, this is on the shortlist of ones that have a believable HEA.

[Shannon Brown]

DNF - 38%

Not my cuppa

[Melanie Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a great book.
It was honest, raw and with realistic characters. I don’t condone what Cameron did, but I understand that Sloan wasn’t perfect either. But, they worked on fixing themselves before they could be with one another.

[sophia melihov · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreakingly beautiful

I am not one for cheating tropes but wow this is so heartbreakingly beautiful. I can understand both point of views. And I was rooting for both sides so much. I am happy with how the story ended. And it was soooo emotional in the most beautiful way.

[Sara · Rating 2 out of 5]

Promising start

It sounded interesting- a husband has an affair and what happens after. The wife found out when the story was only a quarter finished. I was wondering what the rest of the book could be about. Unfortunately, fluff and smaltz.

[Rashi · Rating 1 out of 5]

WARNING: This review contains enough spoilers to ruin the book more thoroughly than the author ruined her own female lead. I’m also going to yap with the furious, unstoppable momentum of a bulldozer driven by a caffeine-addled cynic. Buckle the fuck up, buttercup, because this is going to be longer than Cameron’s list of shitty excuses.

Before We Dive Into the Dumpster Fire: A Thesis Statement Wrapped in a Spoiler Tag
When Cameron's attention was on you, it was intoxicating, making you feel like the center of his world. I remember that feeling all too well. And I was the center of his world for the better part of our marriage, even though most of the time, I wasn't sure I deserved it.

Let’s just pause here and shine a giant, neon-flashing spotlight on this little gem, because it’s the fucking Rosetta Stone for decoding Jona Leigh’s entire literary universe. This right here, in a nutshell, is the patented formula: take a cheating man, dip him in liquid god-complex, and present him as a once-in-a-lifetime cosmic lover, a magnetic force of nature so profound that the real tragedy isn’t his moral bankruptcy—it’s that some poor, flawed woman couldn’t “hold on” to such a rare, emotionally-stunted specimen. It’s like romanticizing a tsunami because the waves are kinda pretty, and blaming the coastal town for not having better flood defenses. The mental gymnastics required to see this as deep romance instead of pathological narcissism could win a gold medal at the Bullshit Olympics.

Act I: The Gala & The Ninety-Day Dickapade – Or, “My Penis Fell and It Can’t Get Up”

So, the story kicks off at a fancy medical gala, which is already suspect because who trusts a surgeon who chooses canapés over, I dunno, not being a scumbag? Here, our “hero,” Cameron Davis—a top-tier surgeon with the moral compass of a back-alley compass that’s been through a woodchipper—finally, magnanimously, admits he’s been raw-dogging Evie Moore for a solid ninety days.

Let’s marinate on that. Three months. Not a drunken oopsie. Not a moment of weakness. A full, quarterly fiscal report of infidelity. He’s been running a whole-ass parallel relationship, complete with dedicated underwear drawer at the mistress’s pad (more on that depravity later), while presumably still letting his wife, Sloane, do his laundry. The audacity of this man is so thick you could spread it on toast.

But here’s the kicker that made me choke on my own incredulity: he performs this confession with more tragic grandeur than Hamlet contemplating Yorick’s skull. He’s more broken than the actual victim! He hits Sloane with the Cheater’s Classic Combo Meal: blame the betrayal on her “silence” and their fights. As if his dick just accidentally, repeatedly, tripped and fell into a coworker’s vagina for ninety consecutive nights because he was “stressed.” Oh, the suffering! The poetic ache! He actually had the gall to claim he stayed in the marriage so long because he didn’t want to “hurt” her.

EXCUSE ME, SIR? You weren’t performing an act of mercy by delaying the reveal; you were being a cowardly, cake-eating fuckboy who wanted to keep his primary residence stocked with home-cooked meals and emotional labor while getting his side of ego-strokes and satin-nightie sex. That’s not nobility; that’s emotional franchise management. You were the CEO of Betrayal Inc., and you were trying to spin the quarterly losses as a noble sacrifice.

Then, this poetic prince of piss drives straight from nuking his wife’s reality to his mistress’s boudoir. He spends the car ride doing a solo performance of “Woe Is My Hard-On,” then immediately gets turned on because Evie answers the door in a short satin nightgown. The cognitive dissonance is staggering. He’s shattered! His heart is in pieces! Also, boner. It’s like watching a man set his own house on fire, cry about the memories lost in the flames, and then get visibly excited about the quality of the marshmallows he brought to roast in the inferno.

And the dedicated drawer? That’s not a detail; that’s a fucking crime scene. That’s premeditation. That’s settler colonialism of adultery. He didn’t just visit; he moved in. And the pièce de résistance, the cherry on this shit sundae? He ends his first official night as a publicly-declared adulterer by moaning his wife’s name while he’s inside the mistress. If that isn’t the most potent metaphor for this entire narrative—using one woman’s body to mourn the fantasy of another, while violating both—then I don’t know what is. It’s not passion; it’s psychological vandalism.

Act II: The Poor-Me World Tour & The Slander Campaign – Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss (His New Motto)

After a night of being balls-deep in the consequences of his own actions, Cameron doesn’t take a beat. He doesn’t hide in shame. No, this master strategist pivots immediately into a full-scale, calculated slander tour. He’s desperate to rebrand from “Cheating Asshole” to “Tragic Victim of a Cold Wife,” and by god, he’s going to gaslight everyone in his phonebook to make it stick.

Despite his “talks of love” being fluffier and less substantial than cotton candy, and his three-month affair being the ultimate “fuck you” to loyalty, he spends his days doing the media rounds. He bitches to his mother. He whines to his brother. He sob-stories to his sister. His thesis? Every ounce of blame for his dick’s field trip belongs to Sloane. She was silent. She was cold. She made him seek warmth in Evie’s... everything.

He plays the “broken, suffocated man” by day, keeping up the “no one can love Sloane more than me, but the bitch never loved me back” facade, all while having precisely zero fucks to give about the woman he left alone, rotting in the silence of the home he poisoned. While Sloane is performing triage on their sinking marriage, staying strong for their five-year-old daughter, Harper, and basically holding the entire wreckage of her life together with duct tape and sheer will, Cameron is… what? Getting his ego stroked and likely having apology-sex marathons with Evie. He knew Sloane was a chronic pain-bottler with the support system of a lone cactus in the desert, yet he couldn’t spare a single, solitary goddamn thought for her well-being. He was genuinely shocked she had the audacity to cry after his confession. AS IF HE HADN’T JUST VAPORIZED HER ENTIRE EXISTENCE.

This is peak gaslighting. He was busy being “miserable” in his mistress’s bed—the world’s smallest violin playing a sad tune for the man who chose the bed—while Sloane single-handedly carried the wreckage of the life he blew up. He’s the arsonist complaining that the smoke from his own fire is making his eyes water.

Act III: The Saint vs. The Arsonist – Or, How to Be a Doormat with Dignity

While Cam was busy on his “Poor Me” press junket, rebranding Sloane’s very real, very diagnosed C-PTSD responses as personal malice, our girl was out here displaying a level of grace that should have canonized her. The contrast isn’t just stark; it’s a fucking solar eclipse of irony.

He played the martyr of an arson he lit, whimpering that the heat was uncomfortable. Meanwhile, Sloane was eating lunch in smelly hospital supply closets or freezing public parks just to escape the “uncontrollable gossip” his betrayal unleashed. Instead of dragging his name through the mud (which he 1000% deserved), she shrunk herself to survive. She defended him to his own mother. She begged his mother to let him back into the house… for Harper’s sake. When confronted by his brother, she didn’t unload the truth bomb; she demurred, telling Caleb to “ask your brother.” She gave him the chance to be honest, to maybe, just maybe, show a shred of decency.

Even after the confession, even after knowing he had a whole-ass second life, Sloane remained his personal health concierge. She was the only one noticing his headaches, handing him peppermint oil, because she still knew his needs better than he knew himself. WHY, SLOANE? WHY ARE YOU LIKE THIS? It’s the ultimate, gut-wrenching irony: Cam was out there crying “suffocation” to anyone who’d listen, while Sloane was the one literally struggling to breathe in the toxic waste dump he left behind.

Act IV: The Soul-Bleach & The Euphemism Factory – Making Infidelity Look Like a Yoga Retreat

Let’s talk about the author’s most insidious trick: the literary equivalent of a crime-scene cleanup crew. The narrative employs every trick in the book to sugarcoat, sanitize, and shove Cameron’s three-month cheat-fest into a tasteful closet, slapping a saintly “finding peace” or “poetic ache” bow on his scummy double life.

It ghosts every filthy, human, real detail. The story is allergic to specifics when it comes to Cam’s sin, but let’s imagine what those ninety days actually looked like, shall we? Because the author sure as hell won’t show us:

· How many times did this prick do a load of laundry at Evie’s fuck-pad, folding his boxers next to her satin nighties, while telling Sloane he was “working late”?
· How often did he stare at Evie’s “hot bod” post-surgery, his brain already checking out of his marriage and into the Motel 6 of his morals?
· How many shady “I need to take this” calls did he duck out for in the hospital hallway, phone glowing with mistress-texts?
· How many times did he bitch to Evie about “the lies,” trashing Sloane, painting himself as a prisoner, while begging for a 24/7 Evie-paradise?
· How many times did they share gut-busting laughs over hospital gossip, only for him to come home to Sloane and turn into a sourpuss statue?
· How frequently did he bullshit about a solo “studio apartment” life, toasting their “freedom” with raunchy revenge-bangs against the wife who was… at home being his wife?
· How many school-drop-offs for Harper turned into steamy car gropes in the passenger seat Sloane sat in during the next hospital haul? 🤮
· And the emotional vomit kicker: how many sappy “I love yous,” or “I’ll leave my wife for you” soulmate secrets were spilled? How many dreamy futures were plotted over wine, with Evie raging that Sloane was the buzzkill bitch and him hushing her with lip-locks that slid right into the main event?

The author isn’t writing a story; she’s running a PR firm for a shitty guy. She peddles top-shelf soul-bleach. Saint Cam gleams under the spotlight, while Sloane is systematically gaslit into being the villain in her own goddamn life.

Act V: The “Breakup” – Where the Mistress Learns She’s Just a Trauma Dildo

After a full week of wallowing in victimhood while using Evie as a human stress ball, Cameron finally has his epiphany. And forget any nonsense about him “grabbing his chance at happiness” with her. Nope. He wakes up to the gut-punch truth: Sloane is a fucking haunting. She’s in his blood, his ribs, his marrow. No other woman—not even the one he’s currently plowing—can fill the raw, Sloane-shaped hole in his chest.

And get this: after twelve years of marriage, three months of extracurriculars, plus one trial-week fuck-fest with Evie, he finally “notices” Sloane’s love language for the first damn time. She never parroted “I love you” back with words. Instead, she whispered it through tender nose kisses, jaw grazes, soft lip presses. She built love brick by quiet, consistent, actionable action. In the dead of night, she sought him out because only his presence hushed her restless, whirlwind thoughts. EPIPHANY MUCH, CAM? Took you only a decade and a betrayal to figure out the woman you married!

Zero sympathy here for the parasitic skank Evie, but also, note how Cam doesn’t slap the “cheating losers” label on them. Oh no. He upgrades their tawdry affair to tragic poetry.
"I looked at her, and at that moment, I saw myself. Evie was me once, long ago, loving Sloane so fiercely, blinded by hope, deaf to the truth"

See? They’re not two consenting adults who made shitty, selfish choices. They’re broken souls. His obsession is now pinned back on Sloane, while Evie is eternally orbiting him as the “best man she ever had.” Why? Because her exes were toxic Rottweilers, and Cam was the sleek, slightly-refined Golden Retriever who at least skipped the screaming matches. The bar is in hell.

Post-breakup, Evie becomes a relentless nightmare, spamming his phone and then storming the hospital to stake her claim with a public hug, humiliating Sloane in the process. But did Sloane sling mud? Did she reveal the affair to his colleagues? Nah. Saint Sloane defended him to the mistress’s face, urging her not to trash his reputation.
"Have some self-respect. A little more dignity. It’s embarrassing to chase after a man, a married man like this. Really. And if you truly care about him, you wouldn’t try to create problems at his workplace. He loves it here. He built his career here. He’s a damn good surgeon with a bright future ahead of him. He left you. So move on, peacefully, and stay away from here."

Honestly, Sloane, I was pissed at you for that move. But to the legion of backbench haters this book cultivates who want to brand her heartless and abusive? Eat this, assholes. Jona Leigh twisted this scene to frame it as two women clawing over the hot prize of Cam. Nice try, sweetheart. You can never make me hate Sloane like you suckered all those other readers into doing.

Act VI: The Enabler Circus – Or, “Let’s All Pile On The Trauma Survivor”

At this point, I’m basically yapping into the void, and if you’re still with me, I love you for that. You have the patience of a saint trapped in a shitty novel.

So, brother Caleb corners Cam for the Evie-breakup tea, expecting, maybe, a molecule of accountability for his adultery marathon. Nope. This poetry-shitting asshole dodges again, pinning it all on Sloane with his whiny gem: he was “cursed to love a woman who will never truly love him back.” Shitting in verse since day one, what a prick!

But Cam shaming Sloane wasn’t enough. Even her own self-flagellation fell flat for the narrative’s needs. Enter the author’s masterstroke: two enablers who exist solely as her own personal mouthpieces, Dean and Ben. Dean is Cam’s ride-or-die bestie. At first, he’s pissed—good! But soon, he’s enabling the whole mess, recasting Sloane as “difficult to love” poison. He greenlights Cam’s bullshit and has the audacity to shame Sloane’s innocent, platonic hangouts with a kind colleague, Gabriel, as “wrong.”

"I still can't excuse what you did, but I can see how it broke you. Because you did have the patience of a saint, Cam, right up until you crossed over to the dark side and went full villain"
"But you know what you did wrong, Cam, and you regret it. You know now that she was in love with you, so why not fight for her? Try to build something real this time, the right way. The way she treated you wasn't fair, but staying silent and just taking it wasn't right either. Eventually, it built up and exploded, and you did the worst thing you could've done. There has to be a better way. Some way to meet in the middle."
"I still can't believe you did this, Cam. Knowing how much you love Sloane, how every time she knocked you flat on your face, you got up and ran right back to her. Even when you two fought like you wanted to kill each other, you always came back. Your determination and tenacity were something I admired. So no, I never would've fucking guessed you'd do this to her."
"What about that new doctor, Gabriel? I've heard he's been around Sloane a lot. People have seen them slipping off onto the fifth-floor balcony... It's not just the other woman causing gossip now. Sloane getting that close to another guy, right in front of everyone and right in front of you, that's not okay either."


Did you catch that? Layers upon layers of “50 Shades of How to Hate Sloane.” Comparing her platonic chats to his three-month fuck-fest? Balls of steel, Dean! Absolute balls of steel on this enabler. Gag me, Jona Leigh. You are the architect of enabler hell!!

(To be continued in the comments because word-limit! Stay tuned for the trauma hijack, the therapy farce, and the final insult.)

[Aaron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ending was redeeming

I really did not like dmc.She treated him terribly and was cruel and abusive, and I don't blame him for cheating at all. The only thing I think m m c did wrong was being what that other woman before he left his wife. I really don't like how this story really centered.More so on what he needed to be redeemed, and how mean everybody was to him without actually addressing the way she was awful to him for ten straight years, that is crazy.

[Carole Copeland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Liked it more than I thought

Liked this book more than I thought I would. Even though the author gave him a....I can see why he needed validation....reason, she did well that she pushed that wasn't an excuse to cheat. I liked that this story had a layer of her background and trauma. What I LOVED was the author showed a strong woman who knew in the mist of her pain and her acknowledgement of her love for her husband, she did not cheat. She knew she wasn't ready..I loved that there was no revenge sex and someone hurt because she wasn't emotionally available..So many authors show women as weak and not being strong enough to know she needs help. Good book.

[Ella · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 round up to 3. Bored in the middle parts of this book.

[Raffaella · Rating 1 out of 5]

I’m definitely sorry for the low rating because I liked the previous books of this author. This definitely didn’t work for me.
I don’t recommend it to my safety friends of course, they would have a conniption just like I had when I realized that the heroine would go back with the cheater.
The story is also very angsty but with a wrong kind of angst.
Someone could even say it’s a realistic kind of story but who cares, this is fiction and I like what I like. And I don’t like this.
The heroine and the hero have been married for years, they have a daughter, they are both successful doctors.
The heroine though has always been very emotionally closed, she seldom says ily, and she refused to talk to the hero whenever there’s something wrong.
The hero is the opposite, a golden retriever kind of guy, and he suffers from this emotional distance.
So he tried everything, from forcing her to open up, and receiving all kind of insults, to proposing therapy, which she always refused.
So in the end he left her.
This would have been fine, but we understand that one of the reasons why he left her was that he found a hot piece of ass, younger and hotter of course, that he’s having very satisfying sex with, so in the end he tells the heroine he has another woman and is ready to divorce her.
Ok, truth be told, the heroine is not very nice and by the fragments about their life together she was also very verbally abusive to him whenever he tried to force her to be more open and emotionally available. I would not like to live with someone like her but since she didn’t become like this suddenly, but was always this kind of person, I wonder why the hero married her and stayed with her for years.
They didn’t date for two weeks, so he knew very well what kind of person she was, so why did he marry her if he wasn’t ok with her personality?
This was already grating on my nerves, but what happened afterwards is even worse.
The heroine is of course very hurt by his cheating, because she thought, as any sane and honest person, that they were going through a rough patch but that he was still keeping his vows.
All his family at this point hate him, but there worse, at one point we also have the pleasure of seeing ow in the hospital where she tries to be cozy with him in front of all their colleagues. Because well, the heroine and the hero and all his family work in the same hospital so everyone knows them, and ow coming to make a statement was humiliating and disgusting.
I hated this hero with all my heart, I seldom hate a character so strongly because he’s a narcissist selfish dishonest weak asshole.
Soon after he told the heroine he had another woman he regrets it, and while still having a lot of sex with ow and even planning to be serious with her, he starts thinking that probably he still loves the heroine.
At this point I wanted him dead.
The heroine, while not being a very pleasant person because she’s close and distant, is a honest and kind woman, who instead of many words, uses actions to take care of those she loves.
Then the truth about the heroines past comes out.
A family that was emotionally and physically abusive even if they were rich and powerful.
And the heroine had the worst trauma when she tried to help her brother who had attempted suicide but eventually failed and saw him dying.
So her behavior and inability to communicate her feelings are the result of a trauma.
At this point I was hoping that since there was a hot doctor that was very interested in the heroine and the heroine found him very nice, there would be a new hero.
But no.
The author decided that the heroine had to go back with the man who added new trauma to her childhood trauma.
The hero dumps ow but honestly, who cares, at this point I was already uninterested in the rest of the story because I couldn’t stand the thought that this woman so abused by all her significant people during her life would spend the rest of her life with one of those.
I don’t care if the hero changed, what he did was already past the breaking point.
I would have respected him very much if he had filed for divorce when he realized he couldn’t live with the heroine anymore because she definitely wasn’t an easy person to live with. It would have been angsty enough, but the author had to add another painful trauma to this already battered woman and honestly, even if these kind of situations can happen in real life I don’t want them in my books.
Cheating as a means to create angst is cheap.
In this case the hero leaving her and filing for divorce would have been angsty enough, but having him cheat and then humiliating her when his mistress paraded herself in front of all her family and colleagues, well, this was past redemption.
I don’t care if he told her he loved her, he didn’t love her the right way.
And he abused her.
Some people could say she abused him too, and that’s true, but allow me, since he married an emotionally closed woman, his continuous attempts to force her to open up, to talk to him, to say ily, were honestly disturbing, I felt he was trying to violate her when he did it. So no, I didn’t want him even without the cheating but the cheating was the cherry on top, and I never accepted that she would go back to him.
Why put the hot doctor in the story if they never even shared anything meaningful?
It was as if the hero was her only chance but he was not.
I don’t like when women go back to their abusers, even when the abuser has changed because there will always be the shadow of their abuse between them.
In this story I would have liked that the heroine, after going to therapy, after changing herself and become more open and less afraid, would have found a new love with a new man, one that for once in her life, hadn’t already hurt her.
A word about other woman. She’s described by he heroine as a gorgeous younger woman and this was already hateful enough because seeing the poor heroine doubt herself as a woman when we know what she went through was unfair and wrong. Then the author tried to make her a good woman when she’s anything but.
She knew he was married with a child, and she kept seeing him so shes definitely no good and while she’s not a psycho I don’t feel any empathy to someone who goes after a married man and pushes him to divorce his wife and leave his family. She didn’t deserve anything good. Because she didn’t behave like Glenn close doesn’t mean she’s good. People make choices and her choices were wrong, dishonest and selfish.
There’s another thing I’d like to say.
The heroine had a past of severe abuse and repeated trauma, resulting in ptsd and mental issues.
The hero cheating on her because she was the way she was, and the heroine going back to him, makes it look like somehow it’s her fault that she’s like that, so it’s another weight on her already traumatized self.
The hero after all married her, tried to be a good husband, tried to make her more open, and failed, so he dumped her and cheated and all this left me a bitter taste in my mouth because it was as if her traumatized self was at fault for what the hero did to her.
This is unacceptable.
Even if he didn’t know what happened to her he hurt her and added another trauma and at this point the only right thing to do was to let her go, so she could rebuild herself stronger, and find another love with another man who wasn’t part of the trauma.
So no, I didn’t like the book at all and in the end it was very painful to me to see that she took him back, it’s as if she never deserved anything good in her life.

[Natalie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This review is gonna be very long and might reveal some of the spoilers about this literary masterpiece so please read at your own risk!!

1.When the Wattpad girlies were crying in the comment section about how this book was “so real,” “so different,” and “so heartbreakingly authentic,” I rolled my eyes so hard!! I thought they were being dramatic, delusional, and dangerously unserious. But guess what? I WAS WRONG. So wrong that if there were a Guinness World Record category for THE MOST INCORRECT ASSUMPTION FOLLOWED BY VIOLENT LITERARY SHOCK, I would win it with confetti cannons exploding behind me!!!
Because this book does something revolutionary, Groundbreaking, History altering and Nobel Prize worthy!! It gives us the redemption arc to end all redemption arcs! Forget groveling husbands. Forget accountability. Forget logic. In this masterpiece, the cheated wife becomes the one who goes to therapy, grovels, and works tirelessly to make sure her husband never cheats again!! She apologizes for being cheated on!She improves herself because it was her fault someone else lacked fidelity and impulse control. And the best part? Her efforts WORK. He does not cheat again for the next FORTY YEARS!!!!
Forty. Years. The bar was not low. The bar was in the earth’s crust, buried under fossil layers, but our queen dug herself down, found it, polished it, and said “yes king!!! you didn’t cheat again!!!”
This is not just a plot!This is a revolution! The romance genre will never be the same. Cheating trope authors everywhere are probably taking notes, crying, or both. Someone, somewhere is making a documentary titled The Day Redemption Arcs Ascended to God Tier and all thanks to Jona Leigh!!

2. Now, I would humbly request humanity to express more affection to Jona’s cheating men. Because clearly, a global crisis is unfolding. In her past books, Aiden and Cole were not told I love you enough as children and guess what happened. CHAOS!! Tragedy!! Affairs longer than some marriages. Torrid secret romances spanning from 6 months to nearly an entire year, fueled by passion, emotional constipation, and the absolute absence of those three tiny words.
And here, history repeats itself. Sloane dares, DARES, to not tell Cam I love you regularly and obviously, he had no choice but to cheat. His hands were tied. Biology demanded it!Gravity demanded it!! Bluetooth connectivity demanded it!!He simply had to seek emotional WiFi elsewhere.
So please. For the survival of marriage as an institution, for the safety of fictional wives everywhere, and to prevent authors from writing sequels, redemption epilogues, and 30-chapter apology arcs and love for cheating men,TELL THEM I LOVE YOU!!
Say it like a prayer. Say it like a vaccine booster. Because Jona is exhausted. She has been doing Olympic-level emotional labor to turn cheaters into misunderstood angels in her previous books. And now once again had to produce emotional CPR because someone skipped affection hour.

3. Next, I must express my deep gratitude to Miss Leigh. When some of us politely (and by politely, I mean dramatically, loudly, and emotionally) pointed out that she spent half the previous book turning Cole into a tragic victim because “impregnating your mistress is an accident that happens to good people sometimes,” she listened. She reflected. She evolved.
She said: “You think childhood trauma was misused? WATCH ME.” And instead of using trauma to excuse the cheater, she used trauma to villainize Sloane, the cheated wife, and sweet heavens above she did it beautifully. She turned trauma into a weapon of character assassination. She turned healing into the punishment. She turned the victim into the problem and the cheater into a misunderstood baby bird who just needed warmth, reassurance, and a private messaging app!!Suddenly Sloane is not a hurt woman struggling to cope with betrayal. No. She is the problem!! The unstable one!!The emotional liability and obviously the reason he cheated. And the beauty is she does it with such commitment that you almost start thinking Sloane should apologize for existing while her husband receives a trophy for not cheating again!
That level of narrative gymnastics deserves worldwide recognition. I have never seen someone weaponize trauma in two opposite directions across two books like this. It is not writing anymore. It is choreography. It is performance art. It is unhinged brilliance!!
She showed us she doesn't uses trauma just to victimize people,she can use it to villainize them as well!! Chef’s kiss!! Authentically absurd!!

4. And honestly this book made me drown in nostalgia!!! The good ol’ days!!! Back when I used to work part time in a bar where grown men would wobble in with whiskey breath and tragedy in their eyes!!! They would clutch the counter and sob about how much they loved their wives for years and years and YEARS, and how those cruel, heartless, stone-hearted women threw away entire decades of love over one teeny tiny microscopic mistake of cheating!!! Just one!!! A little oopsie!!! A baby boo boo!!! A slip of loyalty!!!
The way they victimized themselves was pure performance art!!! Oscar worthy!!! Michelin star gaslighting!!! Me and my colleagues would roll our eyes so hard we saw the back of our brains, but there were always a few kindhearted ladies who would sit there weeping with them!!! And besties, reading Jona Leigh’s books gives me the exact same bartender PTSD!!! Suddenly I am no longer myself! I feel my soul leave my body, ascend gently, and slip straight into the spirit of Jake, the bartender from one of her previous novels. I am wiping down imaginary glasses. I am listening to another grown fictional man weep about how his wife “made him cheat.” I am offering him the emotional support he does not deserve. I am Jake now!!! I have astral projected into a bar where everyone cries and the cheater is the star of the show!!!
And the funniest part??? In real life the ladies cried inside the bar. In Jona Leigh’s universe the ladies cry behind their Wattpad screens!!! The ecosystem has not changed!!! The species has simply migrated!!!

5. Lastly Jona Leigh has personally taught me an entirely new love language and I am floored!!! Silenced!!! Enlightened!!! Because apparently love is NOT caring for your husband in the everyday ways real humans do!!! Love is NOT cooking for him, worrying about his health, hovering over him like a stressed pigeon when he overworks, or massaging his head with peppermint oil like a loving partner who actually has a functioning soul!!! Nope!!! Silly us!!! That is not love!!! That is just nonsense we picked up from real life and sanity!!!
According to Miss Leigh, love is marrying a rose and then being absolutely furious that roses have thorns!!! Love is ignoring the petals, ignoring the scent, ignoring every beautiful thing about the rose and screaming at the top of your lungs about the THORNS because tragedy must be aesthetically pleasing!!! That is romance, babes!!! That is art!!!
Love is violating your wife’s boundaries while calling it “opening her up emotionally”!!! Love is poking her trauma like a toddler poking a sleeping dog, then acting shocked when she reacts!!! Love is provoking her over and over, then slapping the Abuser Label on her forehead the moment she finally snaps!!! True passion!!!
Love is definitely NOT noticing the tiny ways she shows affection, the soft places where her love language leaks through her silence, the tenderness in her everyday care, the fears she doesn’t know how to voice, or the childhood wounds she never healed!!! That is boring!!! We do not do emotional literacy here!!!
Real love, according to Cameron the Poetic Disaster, is writing endless inner monologues about how your wife built a home in your heart and hung pictures on the walls of your ribs while you are LITERALLY driving to your mistress’s house after confessing your three month affair!!!!
Love becomes even more profound when you moan your wife’s name during a vertical tango with your mistress because fidelity is temporary but delusion is forever!!! Love is telling your mistress no woman can bleed your wife out of your system AFTER spending a whole week in her bed having cardio sessions with no moral oxygen!!!
Love is forgiving your wife because obviously she was responsible for your cheating!!! Of course she was!!! Accountability is for peasants!!!
Love is supporting your wife through therapy so SHE can become deserving of you, the man who cheated because she did not perform the correct emotional circus tricks on command!!! A king!!! A healer!!! A messiah of marriage!!!
And love, above all, is what Jona Leigh has for her cheating men!!! Because between turning a narcissistic playboy cheater into a tragic trauma victim in her last novel and transforming an actual trauma survivor into the villain in this one, she has made her message very clear!!! Cheaters are precious baby deer who need cuddles!!! Victims are disposable plot furniture!!! And emotional logic has left the building!!!

Jona, bestie, your commitment is astonishing!!! Brava!!!

​ The "He’s Just a Victim of Circumstance" Fund (A little non-sponsored side note)
​Please support and love this book as much as you can. Every cent goes directly to the Cheating Men’s Association, a non-profit founded by Jona Leigh to support the real victims of infidelity: the men who got caught. Your donation provides essential services like 'Better Excuses Workshops' and 'How to Delete Your Browsing History 101.' For just the price of a coffee, you can help a man who’s currently sleeping on his best friend’s couch!!

[Tasha · Rating 1 out of 5]

A FUCKING ABSURD Attempt at Cheater Redemption:
Listen up, because I'm fresh off a several-week-long bender of cheating trope books and I've noticed a truly offensive trend, and Jona Leigh’s The Quiet Between is basically the poster child for this crap. For weeks I've been reading authors like Groveltohea and Alison Rhymes, and they all pull the same infuriating move: the supposed "grovel" part of the cheating trope is thrown on the backburner so the author can spend a good chunk of the book polishing the cheater’s halo and painting him as some kind of misunderstood saint. It’s fucking absurd.
We’re supposed to believe this bullshit narrative that he cheated, but he only loved his wife? That he "didn't go that far" with the mistress because that would be the biggest betrayal to the wife? Excuse me, but what the actual hell is cheating, then? The gymnastics these authors do to excuse a man’s lack of self-control is honestly insulting. My favorite bit of absolutely mind-numbing logic is when the author assures us he "felt nothing for the mistress," and,get this,he was thinking of his wife while literally having sex with the mistress! Babes, it's okay, you don't need to try and coat their shit with silver! He cheated. Full Fucking stop!! It’s clear as day that he did not respect or love his wife enough to avoid hurting her so brutally. He’s a piece of shit, and the author should be focusing on showing us the actions and realizations that turn him into a genuinely changed man, not glossing over the infidelity with pathetic excuses.
What I crave, and what this book completely fails to deliver, is raw, messy grovel. I love a strong female lead, but I want to see her break down!I mean the ugly, snotty, heaving sobs, the dwelling on every unwanted insecure thought and fear. I want to see the struggles of trusting again documented with painful clarity. Where a simple ding on his phone makes her alert, where the breach of trust is slowly, painstakingly rebuilt. Where touching him initially grosses her out because she remembers he touched the mistress too. I want loads and loads of uncomfortable, necessary conversations! Instead, the good chunk of this book is spent bending over backward to prove the cheater isn't a bad person, just someone who does bad things. What kind of nonsensical logic is that?
And here’s where Jona Leigh pulled the laziest, most infuriating fucking move in The Quiet Between: she completely glossed over Cameron's cheating and threw all the blame on Sloane, the wife! Literally 20 out of 30 chapters were dedicated to how Sloane never said "I love you," how she never opened up, and how she built emotional walls. Then, the author tries to establish this rare, deep kind of love between them, which, honestly, cannot fester if Sloane was the total bitch the author was painting her to be. If that deep love existed, they must have shared countless good moments, but the author conveniently brushed away all the positive parts of their marriage to create a negative image around Sloane. It’s character assassination to redeem a terrible husband.
This left me with so many unresolved questions:
* What exactly made Cameron love Sloane so profoundly if she was such a closed-off mess?
* Why the f*ck did he date her for two years, propose, marry her, build a decade of life with her, and have a child with her if she was supposedly so “bad” from the beginning?
* If she did have good qualities and they had a decent life together, then why didn’t the author show much of it? Why only the bad moments? When did their marriage start turning worse? Because if you slap the whole ten years bullshit answer then sorry I'm not buying this crap!! No marriage sustains such strong connection and love you have established between them on grounds of a decade of abuse!! That's a strong,illogical and unrealistic dichotomy!
* Why was her childhood trauma introduced and then never fully unpacked?
* If he loved her as deeply as the book claims, why did he never pause and think, "Hey, maybe my wife is carrying some dark, painful shit from her past that's making her guarded?" He never made that effort before he started dipping his dick elsewhere.
If your idea of redeeming a cheater means creating an even bigger villain (in a very nonsensical way), then honestly, just drop the pen. I’m a petty bitch who cannot be swayed by poetic language, unlike the other ladies who have apparently folded and enabled this chauvinist crap. This isn't redemption; it's a massive cop-out.
And stop the nonsense of them taking about 2.5 years to find their way back to each other! I don't fucking care about those 2.5 years or the therapy if those 2.5 years were basically crammed into three chapters! Like, after Sloane's past was revealed, the plot moved like a freight train. Suddenly, in one change of paragraph, time passes to one month, and then to three months in therapy, and in the very next chapter, when her father meets with an accident, it’s shown that it’s been one whole year of therapy! How? There was no proper documentation of what exactly happened in the therapy sessions. His cheating was completely swept under the rug, and now Sloane was taking therapy just to be better for him? And then we find out more time has passed, they have reconciled, and she tells him she's pregnant. The chapter ends, and the next chapter starts with her having already delivered their baby boy! And then, two paragraphs later, there’s another massive time skip, and now their baby boy is three! What the fuck? There was no proper unpacking of her therapy sessions or what happened during those monumental timeskips! This whole resolution was a rushed, lazy, and utterly unearned piece of writing.

And in the end, Jona Leigh, I have to ask the f*cking obvious question: how can you, as a woman, consistently write female characters to be punished for surviving while excusing male infidelity? How can you villainize a traumatized woman for coping and self-preservation while glorifying a cheater? What was so special about Sloane that supposedly made Cam love her so much, and why didn’t you document it properly? Why did you obsessively emphasize her shortcomings instead of her humanity? Aren’t you ashamed of how morally bankrupt, misogynistic, and emotionally tone-deaf your storytelling has become? This is the third book in a row where your messaging has gotten more and more problematic!!

[Janet Welling · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unremarkable.

Overall this is a decent read but, the plot is rather mundane with a lot of repetition. Where the author really excels is with character development. The growth and change that occurs with the hero and heroine is documented in a very relatable manner. Sloane and Cameron work hard to overcome the hurdles that have driven them apart. The narrative drags for most of the book and there are many timeline issues that throw the reader out of the story. A little editing would definitely help. 2.5 stars.

[Palak Jain · Rating 1 out of 5]

This story is a textbook example of how to reward cheating while punishing a woman for having boundaries.

The male lead cheats on his wife for three months. When he finally confesses, the wife—the FMC—does the only self-respecting thing and asks for a divorce. He acts blindsided, leaves the house, and immediately runs to his mistress. He frames the divorce as freedom, declares they can finally be together openly, and celebrates with sex. During that act, he calls out his wife’s name—yet the narrative treats this less as a warning sign and more as romantic confusion.

The very next day, he realizes he’s still in love with his wife. His excuse? He felt neglected because she wasn’t emotionally open. What the story refuses to confront is that her emotional guardedness comes from past trauma he already knew about *before* marrying her and having a child with her. Instead of communicating, seeking therapy, or leaving honestly, he cheats—by choice, repeatedly.

And yet, the narrative works overtime to make the wife the villain.

Her trauma is reframed as emotional abuse. Her boundaries are painted as cruelty. Her decision to leave is treated as unreasonable. Everyone around them joins in, isolating her and framing the marriage’s collapse as her fault—while the man who broke his vows is recast as a hurt, misunderstood victim.

Then comes the final insult: the cheater gets redemption *and* a happily-ever-after with the very woman he betrayed.

There is no real accountability. No lasting consequences. No meaningful growth. The wife is expected to absorb the betrayal, “heal,” and forgive, while the man faces nothing beyond temporary guilt. His infidelity is justified as a reaction to her trauma, while her trauma itself is treated as the real crime.

Worse, the author clearly glorifies toxic men as tragic heroes—men whose selfishness is romanticized, whose cruelty is reframed as emotional depth, and whose betrayals are softened into mistakes deserving forgiveness. The internalized misogyny is impossible to miss: women are blamed for men’s choices, punished for their pain, and expected to earn loyalty by being emotionally convenient.

This isn’t a story about reconciliation. It’s a fantasy where a man cheats, blames his wife’s wounds, and is rewarded with her anyway. Read this only if you’re comfortable with narratives where accountability is optional, toxic men are celebrated, and a woman’s self-respect is treated as the real flaw.

[Maxxxine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m glad this author is a fast writer bcz i’m not ready to read her previous book. The reason why I’m brave enough to read this bcz both h and H made their own mistakes. H’s mistakes is bigger than h (and of course i will never forgive him in real life), but i’m here for grovel story so stop overthinking 😅

There’s cheating from H(physical and emotional), pushing from h, ow drama, h’s mental problems, dark past. So it’s not just simple marriage in trouble story. I love that h is strong, and H keep trying to make amends. Overall i enjoy it.

But why not 5⭐️? Bcz she’s not angry enough or disgusted enough about the fact that H fcking ow for (probably) a month. And don’t forget about the emotional cheating too. The same month after H confessed that he has someone else, h is still care about him. Worry about his weight loss, did he eat or not, he can’t drink alcohol with empty stomach. Hey! He fking ow for (probably) a month while you’re in your home taking care of his daughter 😂 so for me she’s not angry enough and his grovel in that area isn’t satisfying enough.

If you like something like this with angry h i recommend ‘The gift of second chance by N D Jones’ fmc angry the entire time. Disgusted with H. Even simple things give her flashbacks about his betrayal so she doesn’t want to make any physical contact with H.

But overall i like this book.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story was absolutely beautiful. In the beginning, I struggled to move past the cheating and the heartbreak that came with it, but as the chapters unfolded, something incredible happened. The characters did not just patch things up. They rebuilt, learned, and chose each other again with honesty, vulnerability, and effort. Their journey felt raw and real, and I found myself rooting for them long before I realized it.

The epilogue completely undone me. I cried because it was sad, yet it was also filled with warmth and peace. It felt like witnessing the final chapter of a love that lived through storms and still managed to shine. There was something profound in the quiet tenderness of it. The ending hurt, but in the soft way that reminds you how precious love is and how lucky these two were to have found their way back to one another.

This story is not just about romance. It is about forgiveness, patience, and a love that was imperfect yet enduring. It stayed with me long after I turned the last page.

And I am so glad I experienced it. I didn't like her previous books a lot but this one was so beautifully written!

[Margerm, Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the H is unfaithful, the author sets the story up so that both the h and H identify their role in putting their marriage in trouble. The h and H are both doctors in the same hospital. They have a ten year marriage and a five year old daughter. The h and H are constantly fighting. The H moves out. Then he tells the h that he cares about someone else and the affair has been going on for three months. What's devastating for the h is that she sees him and his brother and sister every day since they all work together. The H has felt that he was the one fighting for their marriage when the h would shut him out. The h's childhood was traumatic and she built walls to protect herself but showed her love through her actions e.g., keeping peppermint oil around to ease the H's headaches. The H is not able to move on with the OW especially after he draws some parallels between himself and the OW. The h and H both put in a lot of work into their growth.

[Bryn · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s very rare to read a cheating romance that delves into the complexity of the marriage in trouble as it pertains to both husband and wife. I have lived a marriage that was frayed from mistakes we BOTH were making, so this book felt so much more real to me than the usual (heroine is perfect/victim/martyr while Hero is TSTL)

I really loved both the FMC and the MMC in this story. I’ve come to rely on Jona Leigh books for giving a good gut punch, and tearing your heart out, but bringing healing and real self-change for her characters. She sucks me in every time with just the right amount of angst mixed with self-discovery and finding better.

Jona doesn’t follow an exact pattern every time like some authors of this genre. I love that in every book of hers the circumstances and outcome of the original couple are not formulaic. They’re as unique as her very real-feeling characters.

Loved it. Can’t wait for the next one!