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San Valentin! #1
The Perfect Divorce!
The Perfect Divorce! by Leigh Michaels released on Dec 25, 1996 is available now for purchase.
189 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
44 people are currently reading
117 people want to read
About the author
Leigh Michaels
351 books172 followersLeigh Michaels is the pseudonym used by LeAnn Lemberger (b. July 27 in Iowa, United States), a popular United States writer of over 85 romance novels. She has published with Harlequin, Sourcebooks, Montlake Romance, Writers Digest Books, and Arcadia Publishing. She teaches romance writing at Gotham Writers' Workshop (www.writingclasses.com) She is the author of On Writing Romance.
When Leigh was fifteen she wrote her first romance novel and burned it. She burned five more complete manuscripts before submitting to a publisher. The first submission was accepted by Harlequin, the only publisher to look at it, and was published in 1984.
Michaels was born in Iowa, United States. She received a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, after three years of study and maintained a 3.93 grade-point average. She received the Robert Bliss Award as top-ranking senior in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and won a national William Randolph Hearst Award for feature-writing as an undergraduate.
She is married to Michael W. Lemberger, an artist-photographer.
When Leigh was fifteen she wrote her first romance novel and burned it. She burned five more complete manuscripts before submitting to a publisher. The first submission was accepted by Harlequin, the only publisher to look at it, and was published in 1984.
Michaels was born in Iowa, United States. She received a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, after three years of study and maintained a 3.93 grade-point average. She received the Robert Bliss Award as top-ranking senior in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, and won a national William Randolph Hearst Award for feature-writing as an undergraduate.
She is married to Michael W. Lemberger, an artist-photographer.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 4, 2019
The heroine in this novel annoyed me so bad! I almost didn't finish the book. And the hero was pretty cruel himself and some of the things he said were just mean. They deserved each other.
I never figured out why they married but I think it was a. marriage of convenience but they slept together on occasion and it wasn't very satisfactory for the hero or so he said. It was like making love to a large 'teddy bear'??!?!? wtf? How did he know what that was like I said to myself. Just silly. The heroine was a cold bitch and she asked for a divorce once her Father died and the hero said fine and they separated. Then her Aunt dies and they make love (where was the teddy bear) and they make a baby. The hero wastes no time in staking claim to the heroine again. But now there is another woman. She thinks they are involved and it really looked like that to me too. I think he lied when he said they were just friends. He talked bad about the heroine to her and she was always touching his sleeve, another odd comment. So the sleeve touching set off warnings in the heroines mean brain and she thinks that they were involved. Then the OW gets pregnant and she assumes its the heroes and the OW acted odd about it too and the heroine makes love to him again and sets him free. Of course it's all a big harlequin misunderstanding and they love each other and forget that he called her a large teddy bear and frigid bitch, they get their HEA. He and the ow were only friends only they did commiserate about their respective lousy partners but nothing ever happened. And I didn't buy it but I guess I have to believe it. The whole book was meh again. I may stop reading this author. I found a bunch of them on Scribd during one of my unending sleepless nights and I ran with them, even though I have a zillion books on my Kindle yet to read. I definitely have a case of Attention Deficit Disorder lately. Nothing seems right. This is safe if you believe the hero. I just can't recommend reading it to any of my friends.
I never figured out why they married but I think it was a. marriage of convenience but they slept together on occasion and it wasn't very satisfactory for the hero or so he said. It was like making love to a large 'teddy bear'??!?!? wtf? How did he know what that was like I said to myself. Just silly. The heroine was a cold bitch and she asked for a divorce once her Father died and the hero said fine and they separated. Then her Aunt dies and they make love (where was the teddy bear) and they make a baby. The hero wastes no time in staking claim to the heroine again. But now there is another woman. She thinks they are involved and it really looked like that to me too. I think he lied when he said they were just friends. He talked bad about the heroine to her and she was always touching his sleeve, another odd comment. So the sleeve touching set off warnings in the heroines mean brain and she thinks that they were involved. Then the OW gets pregnant and she assumes its the heroes and the OW acted odd about it too and the heroine makes love to him again and sets him free. Of course it's all a big harlequin misunderstanding and they love each other and forget that he called her a large teddy bear and frigid bitch, they get their HEA. He and the ow were only friends only they did commiserate about their respective lousy partners but nothing ever happened. And I didn't buy it but I guess I have to believe it. The whole book was meh again. I may stop reading this author. I found a bunch of them on Scribd during one of my unending sleepless nights and I ran with them, even though I have a zillion books on my Kindle yet to read. I definitely have a case of Attention Deficit Disorder lately. Nothing seems right. This is safe if you believe the hero. I just can't recommend reading it to any of my friends.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 21, 2012
This novel basically covered a couple fighting for a divorce, only to find out they can't have one, to they don't want one. It felt emotionless to me for a lot of it, until the end when they confessed their love. I was kind of in shock how proper and thoughtless the whole novel sounded and because of that, I would laugh at random times thinking how horribly silly it was, when it was meant to be serious. Gosh, what a mess this novel is.
July 14, 2021
This is one of those unfortunate Leigh Michaels books in which everyone is unpleasant including the people we're supposed to like. Our heroine, Synnamon (yes, really), has huge daddy issues and is in the process of divorcing her daddy-approved CEO-of-the-family-company husband. Her godmother dies and she ends up in bed with her soon to be ex, then ends up pregnant. Oops! Don't worry, though, folks, she talks a lot about abortion and how awful it is and how she could never do that to her baby and gets angry at her ex when she thinks he wants her to get one, but luckily he insists that she NOT get one and moreoever gives her a totally "inarguable" lecture about how all children need a mother and a father so he's going to move back in and they're going to end the divorce and if she doesn't agree then he'll just get full custody of the kid, sorry babe! What a prince, right?
Anyway, she agrees and then realizes that the newly-hired, not-yet-started head of the science department, "Nick," is in fact an attractive woman. She immediately assumes that Nick is in love with Conner (her husband), and then spends a lot of time trying to convince Conner that he should retract his job offer because Nick is a woman so the sexists in the science department won't like working for her. The women's libbers would come after her for saying this but she's only being practical! It has nothing to do with her own feelings! Then she invites Nick to her Valentine's Day dinner with Conner, helpfully making the whole thing as awkward as possible and interpreting every single interaction Nick and Conner have as "the two of them are sleeping together" rather than Nick somewhat awkwardly trying to get to know her soon-to-be-new boss and his pregnant wife.
The dramatic twist we get is that Nick is pregnant - right after starting a new job - and Synnamon helpfully insists that Nick has to tell Conner ASAP and then throws herself into a tizzy worrying over which one of his pregnant ladies Conner will choose. Again, no evidence whatsoever that Nick and Conner are involved other than the facts that (1) Nick is attractive and (2) Conner hired her. Those slutty lady chemists, amirite? It's pretty clearly telegraphed that Synnamon's an idiot and the baby is not, in fact, Conner's, but the conclusions she jumped to are just gross, and I can't forgive her for trying to sabotage Nick's job based on them. Like, Jesus, lady, way to prove just how difficult the workplace was in the '80s for women who didn't inherit the company from their emotionally-withholding fathers.
In the meantime "our hero" is a douchebag - he tells Synnamon to her face that she is a "woman who's so cold that every time she exhales the furnace kicks on" (and this is two-thirds of the way through the book and it's not even the meanest thing he says to her). He also tells Synnamon she was "cold" in bed for the entirety of their marriage which... is a choice, Leigh Michaels, I'll say that. When your lead couple apparently spent their whole marriage having bad sex and the hero's decided it's 100% the heroine's fault... yeah. Luckily, as we've seen, Synnamon deserves this jackass.
I'll go ahead and spoil the rest of the book although it's basically just Synnamon being stupid some more: In case you can't tell, I no longer care what happens to Synnamon and Jerkface at this point, I'm worried about Nick's life choices. Unfortunately, the book doesn't share my feelings, so as far as I'm concerned we're done here.
Anyway, she agrees and then realizes that the newly-hired, not-yet-started head of the science department, "Nick," is in fact an attractive woman. She immediately assumes that Nick is in love with Conner (her husband), and then spends a lot of time trying to convince Conner that he should retract his job offer because Nick is a woman so the sexists in the science department won't like working for her. The women's libbers would come after her for saying this but she's only being practical! It has nothing to do with her own feelings! Then she invites Nick to her Valentine's Day dinner with Conner, helpfully making the whole thing as awkward as possible and interpreting every single interaction Nick and Conner have as "the two of them are sleeping together" rather than Nick somewhat awkwardly trying to get to know her soon-to-be-new boss and his pregnant wife.
The dramatic twist we get is that Nick is pregnant - right after starting a new job - and Synnamon helpfully insists that Nick has to tell Conner ASAP and then throws herself into a tizzy worrying over which one of his pregnant ladies Conner will choose. Again, no evidence whatsoever that Nick and Conner are involved other than the facts that (1) Nick is attractive and (2) Conner hired her. Those slutty lady chemists, amirite? It's pretty clearly telegraphed that Synnamon's an idiot and the baby is not, in fact, Conner's, but the conclusions she jumped to are just gross, and I can't forgive her for trying to sabotage Nick's job based on them. Like, Jesus, lady, way to prove just how difficult the workplace was in the '80s for women who didn't inherit the company from their emotionally-withholding fathers.
In the meantime "our hero" is a douchebag - he tells Synnamon to her face that she is a "woman who's so cold that every time she exhales the furnace kicks on" (and this is two-thirds of the way through the book and it's not even the meanest thing he says to her). He also tells Synnamon she was "cold" in bed for the entirety of their marriage which... is a choice, Leigh Michaels, I'll say that. When your lead couple apparently spent their whole marriage having bad sex and the hero's decided it's 100% the heroine's fault... yeah. Luckily, as we've seen, Synnamon deserves this jackass.
I'll go ahead and spoil the rest of the book although it's basically just Synnamon being stupid some more: In case you can't tell, I no longer care what happens to Synnamon and Jerkface at this point, I'm worried about Nick's life choices. Unfortunately, the book doesn't share my feelings, so as far as I'm concerned we're done here.
May 7, 2017
The only reason I didn't give this 1* is because it's the first book I've ever read in Spanish and I enjoyed being able to understand it haha. However the story itself was the most ridiculous thing I've ever read in my life and all the characters are complete morons. I could probably rant for ages about all the idiotic things they did but I have better things to do.
May 23, 2020
2 ⭐⭐ - Meh!
April 15, 2017
Nice story, enjoyed it.
Good, really enjoyed the book. Would recommend for everyone. Very well written, characters and emotions well described
Enjoy the book.
Good, really enjoyed the book. Would recommend for everyone. Very well written, characters and emotions well described
Enjoy the book.
October 7, 2019
Engaging story line
Till the end there was some sort of suspense because which we keep turning the pages.
But certain parts like that of Luigi was bit boring.
Good for one time read.
Till the end there was some sort of suspense because which we keep turning the pages.
But certain parts like that of Luigi was bit boring.
Good for one time read.
January 19, 2026
This one was such a fun read. Started with a divorce...a night of passion....and then a baby. The dialogue was chef's kiss with all the characters and the way the author had me fooled to the end was crazy. 10/10 would recommend.
May 12, 2017
Easy read!
3.5 Stars. Good story. Fast east read. Would have rated it higher if there were an epilogue or more detail to the ending.
3.5 Stars. Good story. Fast east read. Would have rated it higher if there were an epilogue or more detail to the ending.
July 4, 2020
Good read
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March 17, 2024Old reads
April 21, 2024
When you find yourself wishing the book was about the OW instead, that says it all!
October 13, 2025
I enjoyed this a lot. It was a good continuation of The Perfect Marriage. Nice little wrap up.
January 5, 2026
Very good, unexpected twists
July 27, 2011
I thought the author did a very good job of portraying the heroine as an emotionally frozen girl. She’s solid ice from years of emotional neglect from her father that when she finally thawed out, she managed to overlook simple cues of tenderness from her husband and misconstrue a benign situation with a coworker and her husband. How she could think that a divorce would goad the husband to admit undying love for her, when she herself didn’t show signs of caring either way, I don’t know.
The hero was okay. He was solicitous to her in her pregnant state but he was supportive of her career choices. For all her frigidness, he could have longed dumped her in frustration. But he just went along with her plans. He was by no means an alpha guy; he seems to bide his time a lot. The only instant that he forced his way back was when he learned of the baby. But even then, he waited until late at night to chase her and then the following morning to settle things. I do like that he was willing to be patient with her until she found her way to him. But my biggest complaint was that he should have been assertive more often and prodded her back, especially after she ran away for the last time to Phoenix.
Part of 2-book series by same author. First book, Perfect Divorce. The second book, Fake Fiance, is about the divorce attorney/friend.
The hero was okay. He was solicitous to her in her pregnant state but he was supportive of her career choices. For all her frigidness, he could have longed dumped her in frustration. But he just went along with her plans. He was by no means an alpha guy; he seems to bide his time a lot. The only instant that he forced his way back was when he learned of the baby. But even then, he waited until late at night to chase her and then the following morning to settle things. I do like that he was willing to be patient with her until she found her way to him. But my biggest complaint was that he should have been assertive more often and prodded her back, especially after she ran away for the last time to Phoenix.
Part of 2-book series by same author. First book, Perfect Divorce. The second book, Fake Fiance, is about the divorce attorney/friend.
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April 15, 2017I think it's just dated. She is so cold.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews