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Second Best: A Novel of Friendship, Betrayal, and the Life She Chose
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 13, 2026
⭐️⭐️ (2.0) — “This Book Could’ve Been an Email”
I have never read a book so committed to describing emotional devastation while simultaneously refusing to let anyone actually HAVE emotions 😭
This story has all the ingredients for an absolutely feral domestic drama:
* cheating husband
* betrayal by the best friend
* collapsing marriage
* children involved
* divorce
* grief
* obsession
* emotional affairs
* new romance
And somehow… none of it has any actual emotional friction.
The husband especially became unintentionally hilarious to me because after one single confrontation, he basically vanishes into another dimension.
I am not exaggerating.
He finds out she filed for divorce, shows up angry, pushes his way onto the property demanding answers, the police tell him to leave… and then this man emotionally exits the chat forever. No fighting for the marriage. No attempts to see the children. No custody battle. No mediation scenes. No desperate texts. No manipulation. No emotional fallout. He basically goes:
“What are you doing???”
…and then wanders barefoot into the Carolina fog never to be heard from again 😭
And that emotional flatness infects the entire book.
Nobody reacts to anything with the level of emotion the situation actually deserves. The new love interest Cole is kind and stable, but so low-key that the romance barely creates a pulse. The grief feels muted. The cheating fallout feels muted. The divorce feels muted. Everyone speaks in the same calm, restrained emotional register no matter what’s happening.
Reading this felt like:
Bueller. Bueller. Bueller.
Just an endless stream of subdued emotional observations delivered at the exact same volume for 262 pages.
Ironically, the most interesting part of the book ended up being Amber’s psychology. She spends the entire novel desperately trying to convince herself she was finally chosen first instead of second-best to Kara, and it becomes painfully clear that she builds entire emotional conclusions out of the tiniest scraps of attention.
The affair itself isn’t fueled by some huge obsessive love story. Half the things the husband says to her are incredibly vague and emotionally noncommittal, but Amber interprets every breadcrumb like it’s sacred scripture. A simple:
“I think about you when I’m not with you”
becomes, in her mind:
“This man is hopelessly consumed by me.”
Meanwhile I’m sitting there like:
Girl… this man could’ve said “I brushed my hair in your bathroom” and you would’ve treated it like evidence of eternal devotion 😭
That aspect of the story — the insecurity, projection, and lifelong feeling of being second-best — was actually fascinating. I just wish the book had leaned harder into the emotional messiness of it instead of presenting everything from such a distant, emotionally padded perspective.
And honestly? The blurb already tells you almost everything important anyway — including information the novel itself treats like a gradual reveal. So if you fully read the blurb beforehand, you spend a huge portion of the book waiting for the characters to catch up to information you already know.
The frustrating thing is that the writing itself is perfectly readable. This isn’t bad prose. It’s just a story that constantly describes emotions instead of fully dramatizing them. I kept waiting for some huge emotional detonation that would justify all the restraint and slow simmering — some explosive confrontation, messy breakdown, custody fight, confession, SOMETHING.
Honestly, the only reason I kept reading toward the end was because I was convinced either:
1. the aliens were eventually going to return the missing husband to Earth, or
2. the book was building toward some massive dramatic climax that would suddenly make the emotional flatline make sense.
But no. The emotional tone stays almost completely monotone from beginning to end. There’s never really a true high point, escalation, or payoff moment where the story fully cashes in all the tension it spent 262 pages quietly describing.
Instead I finished the book feeling like I had attended a very calm lecture about a much messier and more interesting story happening somewhere offscreen while the actual characters sat politely in the background regulating their emotions.
I have never read a book so committed to describing emotional devastation while simultaneously refusing to let anyone actually HAVE emotions 😭
This story has all the ingredients for an absolutely feral domestic drama:
* cheating husband
* betrayal by the best friend
* collapsing marriage
* children involved
* divorce
* grief
* obsession
* emotional affairs
* new romance
And somehow… none of it has any actual emotional friction.
The husband especially became unintentionally hilarious to me because after one single confrontation, he basically vanishes into another dimension.
I am not exaggerating.
He finds out she filed for divorce, shows up angry, pushes his way onto the property demanding answers, the police tell him to leave… and then this man emotionally exits the chat forever. No fighting for the marriage. No attempts to see the children. No custody battle. No mediation scenes. No desperate texts. No manipulation. No emotional fallout. He basically goes:
“What are you doing???”
…and then wanders barefoot into the Carolina fog never to be heard from again 😭
And that emotional flatness infects the entire book.
Nobody reacts to anything with the level of emotion the situation actually deserves. The new love interest Cole is kind and stable, but so low-key that the romance barely creates a pulse. The grief feels muted. The cheating fallout feels muted. The divorce feels muted. Everyone speaks in the same calm, restrained emotional register no matter what’s happening.
Reading this felt like:
Bueller. Bueller. Bueller.
Just an endless stream of subdued emotional observations delivered at the exact same volume for 262 pages.
Ironically, the most interesting part of the book ended up being Amber’s psychology. She spends the entire novel desperately trying to convince herself she was finally chosen first instead of second-best to Kara, and it becomes painfully clear that she builds entire emotional conclusions out of the tiniest scraps of attention.
The affair itself isn’t fueled by some huge obsessive love story. Half the things the husband says to her are incredibly vague and emotionally noncommittal, but Amber interprets every breadcrumb like it’s sacred scripture. A simple:
“I think about you when I’m not with you”
becomes, in her mind:
“This man is hopelessly consumed by me.”
Meanwhile I’m sitting there like:
Girl… this man could’ve said “I brushed my hair in your bathroom” and you would’ve treated it like evidence of eternal devotion 😭
That aspect of the story — the insecurity, projection, and lifelong feeling of being second-best — was actually fascinating. I just wish the book had leaned harder into the emotional messiness of it instead of presenting everything from such a distant, emotionally padded perspective.
And honestly? The blurb already tells you almost everything important anyway — including information the novel itself treats like a gradual reveal. So if you fully read the blurb beforehand, you spend a huge portion of the book waiting for the characters to catch up to information you already know.
The frustrating thing is that the writing itself is perfectly readable. This isn’t bad prose. It’s just a story that constantly describes emotions instead of fully dramatizing them. I kept waiting for some huge emotional detonation that would justify all the restraint and slow simmering — some explosive confrontation, messy breakdown, custody fight, confession, SOMETHING.
Honestly, the only reason I kept reading toward the end was because I was convinced either:
1. the aliens were eventually going to return the missing husband to Earth, or
2. the book was building toward some massive dramatic climax that would suddenly make the emotional flatline make sense.
But no. The emotional tone stays almost completely monotone from beginning to end. There’s never really a true high point, escalation, or payoff moment where the story fully cashes in all the tension it spent 262 pages quietly describing.
Instead I finished the book feeling like I had attended a very calm lecture about a much messier and more interesting story happening somewhere offscreen while the actual characters sat politely in the background regulating their emotions.
May 21, 2026
Don’t bother
At the beginning I was hopeful but holy cow was it a whole lot of nothing. No emotion. Lots of little nothings in between the very few pertinent sentences. The best friend is jealous bc guys happens to glance and smile at the FMC when she walks in a room. Yeah…paranoid much? The affair wasn’t addressed at all. The husband just disappears. The best friend idk what the heck happened to her. She wrote a letter to the FMC put it in her own nightstand drawer and….??? Just nothing. I skimmed and just skipped to the end of this whole lot of nothing. What a waste. Ugh.
At the beginning I was hopeful but holy cow was it a whole lot of nothing. No emotion. Lots of little nothings in between the very few pertinent sentences. The best friend is jealous bc guys happens to glance and smile at the FMC when she walks in a room. Yeah…paranoid much? The affair wasn’t addressed at all. The husband just disappears. The best friend idk what the heck happened to her. She wrote a letter to the FMC put it in her own nightstand drawer and….??? Just nothing. I skimmed and just skipped to the end of this whole lot of nothing. What a waste. Ugh.
April 28, 2026
Good bones, not enough info
I really wanted to give this book a better rating. It started out good but then it kind of fell apart. There’s a lot of information I feel that’s missing to really tie everything together. Some of it just was repetitive writing some of it just felt like a I was the one writing the book.
I think the author should’ve done a little bit more explaining about the husband and his lack of care about his kids. Not sure if it’s his first book but a little bit more details would’ve made this book a lot better.
I really wanted to give this book a better rating. It started out good but then it kind of fell apart. There’s a lot of information I feel that’s missing to really tie everything together. Some of it just was repetitive writing some of it just felt like a I was the one writing the book.
I think the author should’ve done a little bit more explaining about the husband and his lack of care about his kids. Not sure if it’s his first book but a little bit more details would’ve made this book a lot better.
May 21, 2026
Reads Like AI- no emotion, little dialogue
This story is a run on of statements, very little dialogue. It does not describe any emotions. We never find out anyones feelings or motivation for the affair. We never get the joy of reading about her husband’s reaction to being caught. There isn’t a confrontation between her and her husband. Or her and her ex best friend. Don’t try to wait for it to get better- it does not. Reads like AI.
This story is a run on of statements, very little dialogue. It does not describe any emotions. We never find out anyones feelings or motivation for the affair. We never get the joy of reading about her husband’s reaction to being caught. There isn’t a confrontation between her and her husband. Or her and her ex best friend. Don’t try to wait for it to get better- it does not. Reads like AI.
May 6, 2026
it’s so confused
I wish there was more detail I guess. The relationship with Derek and amber? Derek what happened to him? He just evaporated?
It’s almost like an abrupt writing.
Weird read
I wish there was more detail I guess. The relationship with Derek and amber? Derek what happened to him? He just evaporated?
It’s almost like an abrupt writing.
Weird read
May 14, 2026
Read like a written version of Flat Stanley. Cheating, divorce, life long friendships, betrayals galore, new romance, workplace trials, and suicide and still read like Flat Stanley.
May 15, 2026
So confused
This book was so confusing. It was a waste of a read. Why do authors repeat so much. The ending was way out there
This book was so confusing. It was a waste of a read. Why do authors repeat so much. The ending was way out there
May 24, 2026
The MFC was devoid of emotions.
May 24, 2026
boring!
It just went on and on with inner dialogue and little else. It was more about her best friend, her husband wasn’t even in any of it.
It just went on and on with inner dialogue and little else. It was more about her best friend, her husband wasn’t even in any of it.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews