I read this one slowly, it was just one of those books that had a way that you took your time with it. It also made me think about things.

Elyse is unhappy. She tries to talk to her husband, but he can't see what's wrong. Their marriage is in trouble and he is blind to it. Because what would the town say!? And so she has an affair. Now this is not something I usually like. but here it makes sense and it gives her power. It makes her happier and it makes her want to leave this crappy marriage. This also made me think as the author says that the best thing women do is staying. They stay, no matter what.

It's a tale about trying to save a marriage, forbidden lust, finding yourself again and about friendship. What she would do without her friends I do not know. They are rocks in her life and she complain to them about her bad marriage, and to some, about the affair. The reader also gets to see the marriages of the friends, and not everything is rosy there either. But every woman is different and can handle different things.

It was a good book and it felt so real. She tried her best, she did the wrong things, but at the same time the right things. And she really did try. It's a book with scenes from a life.

Conclusion:
I can't say why it made me think about so many things, but it just did, love, life and everything else. It was a book where I wanted the heroine to find herself and therefore save herself. ( )

I started reading this book yesterday, I got behind on reading and realized, oh no, I have a blog tour tomorrow. So I pick up the book and start reading, and reading, and reading. I find myself so utterly engrossed in Elyse's life that I have completely tuned out of my own. That is what this book did for me, it let me lose myself for a little bit.

I feel a strong connection with Elyse, she is strong, she knows what she wants but she just doesn't quite know how to get it. She loved her daughter and her BFF but she also loves herself enough to know that she needs something to change. Through out the whole book I just want Phil to look at her and see her, but unfortunately he can't hear me.

This book is exactly what I think a book should be. It is thought provoking and real, so real that is almost feels magical, it is exciting and sad, it makes you think. This book gives you an escape and it strips away your own thoughts and fears about marriage so that you can glimpse some of your own happiness or unhappiness. For good or bad, I think this book will incite change. ( )

Reviewed by Deborah
Review copy provided by SheKnows Book Club

Warnings: adult subject matter

Review: From the first page, I was hooked on Ms. Wright's writing style, on the story and on the characters. Love in Mid Air isn't your typical love triangle story.

Elyse is a complex character. On the one hand, I liked her and felt for her situation on the other hand I could not relate to her at all, she is nothing like anyone I have ever known. Elyse may not be an easy character to root for in most cases but the same could be said for Phil, or Gerry or for any of the other characters in the book.

Elyse Bearden is the unfulfilled wife of a successful North Carolina dentist with an adorable daughter and a nice disposable income that allows her to pursue her “art” throwing pots. On a trip back from Phoenix, she switches her seat as a favor to another passenger and sits next to Gerry, a successful Boston businessman who proceeds to talk, then to flirt, and then to play tonsil hockey in an airport chapel during a flight change. Elyse is unhappy with her life and has a husband who neglects her. She eventually falls into bed with Gerry and the rest of the story is taken up with her once monthly trips to hook up with him in locations around the country while she becomes kinkier in their relationship in an attempt to keep her passion alive then proceeds to tell herself that everything will be fine if she is only looking for happiness without hurting anyone else.

Ms. Wright did a smart thing in making Elyse's husband Phil a likable, decent man, a good father and good provider but a man she simply did not love. Gerry as a character doesn't work for me; I don’t find their relationship believable. He just doesn’t seem to fit into the plot he seems someone that Elyse could easily have replaced with something battery operated that doesn't involve adultery. The ending itself is not very believable and seems totally out of character for Phil.

Elyse's girlfriends, members of her book club, were a varied bunch, each one an individual in her own way, from best friend Kelly, to the "perfect" pastor's wife Nancy, to recently divorced Lynn, to sweet Belinda. While the obvious love interest in the book is Gerry - - I felt that the really best story in the book was the close friendship between Elyse and BFF Kelly. These two were friends that truly loved each other, that depended on each other stuck together through thick and thin. They had a real understanding of each other that neither woman shared with any other person in the book. It was a very welcome diversion.

Despite the subject matter of Love in Mid Air (because adultery is hardly a fun subject), I enjoyed the book. The story was relatively sad - - a woman who felt trapped in a marriage that everyone else considered successful and happy, and a husband who believes everything to be fine and can't grasp the dismal situation his marriage is in.

For the more conservative readers, this book may be a bit too much to handle. There is the obvious adultery, and there are a few sexual situations and strong language. Love in Mid Air is, however, a perfect read for a book club as there are so many debatable issues that would spark conversation for hours. Is any adultery forgivable? Is Elyse a bad person? Is Gerry? Is Phil? Why would Phil not question Elyse flying around every month? Why would her best friend be so enabling of her behavior? Why join a church if you don't really believe? Does anyone in this novel believe in love and happily ever after? ( )

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

So why do I continue to read so-called "chick-lit" novels on such a regular basis, a lot of people ask, when I end up despising so many of them? Well, because I'm convinced that there actually are a few titles out there in the world that manage to be not only smart and unexpected but that wallow in the tropes loved by so many middle-class, middle-aged women; and since the signal-to-noise ratio in this particular genre is so shockingly high, I feel a constant obligation to go actually find these few great chick-lit novels that exist in the world, as a public service if nothing else to all of CCLaP's middle-class, middle-aged female readers (and there's a surprisingly large number of you out there). For example, take Kim Wright's Love in Mid Air, which at is heart tells a fairly simple and typical story for this genre (suburban mom has an affair) and makes sure to hit every chick-lit mark that seems to even exist (Shopping! Bookclubs! Church groups! Etsy businesses! Wine in the afternoon! Idiotic husbands! Soccer games! Er, shopping!), but that miraculously avoids being the kind of "Devil Wears Prada" dreck that sets smart readers' nerves on edge; instead, it's an incredibly nuanced and preternaturally insightful look at how these kinds of situations actually tend to play out in the real world, a hyper-intelligent blend of character and action that contains one of the most instantly addictive first chapters I've ever read in any genre.

Part of that can be chalked up to the complex main character herself; a cynical and funny woman but with only slightly better-than-average looks, she compensated when younger by being transgressive and sexually adventurous but has grown larger, softer and more Christian in middle-age, making the poetically intense start of her surprise dalliance just as much a shock to us as her, and drawing us into the ways it serves as a catalyst for her to simultaneously recapture some of her youth and also finally claim some of the traits of the confident, vaguely erotic older woman she was always destined to become. And part of this book's success for sure can also be chalked up to its incredibly engaging style, which oh-so-blessedly for chick-lit treats its males as complex, sympathetic wholes instead of the mustache-twirling cartoon characters so many of these types of novels do; readily admits the faults of our heroine and isn't afraid to show her sometimes acting pretty badly herself; contains the kinds of subtle observations about well-known situations that only a master storyteller can pull off; and is filled with the kind of dry, gently subversive humor that made even bitter, science-fiction-loving ol' me giggle in public on a regular basis. (Two of my favorite moments: the main characters stumbling across a forgotten freezer in their church basement, filled with a hundred frozen 1950s-style "emergency casseroles," many made by spinsters who have been dead for decades; and how the Hallmark store at the mall suddenly transforms into an exotic import shop in Manhattan in our protagonist's eyes, the day after consummating her affair for the first time.) One of those rare books whose score kept getting higher and higher in my head as I read more and more of it, I suspect that this will be showing up on CCLaP's best-of lists at the end of the year as well, a little-known gem within a genre that tends to muddle in the mind's eye many times into a big, shiny, high-heeled mess, and a worthy companion not only to Tom Perrotta's Little Children but the classic predecessor that both often reference, Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. It comes strongly recommended to CCLaP's entire audience.

Out of 10: 9.5 ( )

There’s nothing worse, he says, than to be halfway up the face of a mountain, past the turnback point, and all of a sudden to realize you can’t count on the other person. I ask him what the turnback point is and he says there’s a place you get to in every climb where it’s as dangerous to retreat as it is to advance. I nod. It seems I should have known this. – from Love in Mid Air, page 5 -

Elyse Bearden has been married for nine years. She has a wonderful seven year old daughter, Tory, and her life is rich with friendship – especially that of Kelly, her best friend from high school – and creativity (she is a potter). But Elyse is unhappy. After nine years, she believes she has married the wrong man – a good man, but one who doesn’t “see” her, one who minimizes who she is and is content if things are just “nice.” Then one day, flying home from a business trip, she finds herself sitting next to Gerry, a mountain climber who is also married. What unfurls from that fated connection is an affair which not only takes Elyse by surprise, but has consequences for everyone in her life.

Kim Wright’s novel is smart women’s fiction. This is no light weight read and Wright does not swerve away from the difficult questions about fidelity (or lack of it), marriage, parenting, and the inevitable consequences of stepping to the edge of our lives and taking a leap of faith. What Wright does in Love in Mid Air that separates it from other women’s fiction, is delve deeper into the psyche of women and ask the questions many women are afraid to ask themselves: Is it okay to want something more? Are our dreams made of fluff, or should we give them wings to fly? Can a woman truly be whole without the weight of a wedding ring on her finger or a man by her side? Are we brave enough to leave behind what we know in order to discover something bigger?

Wright’s sense of irony shines through her prose and rescues the novel from being too heavy. The friendship between Kelly and Elyse is captured perfectly, underscoring the honesty, humor and love that can develop between women. As Elyse begins to give voice to her unhappiness there is a sense that she must break apart the trappings of her life to uncover the beauty of who she really is…and Wright captures this rebirth though the symbolism of Elyse’s work as a potter.

It turns out there are many ways to break things. You can do it fast, with a single, wrenching snap, or carefully, with a hammer and chisel in hand. You can do it wildly, like a pinata, or methodically, like tapping an egg against the side of the bowl. Or – and this turns out to be the most effective way of all – you can just hold the pot over your head and drop it. Throughout the winter and into the spring I watch as the pieces fly across my concrete floor. – from Love in Mid Air, page 250 -

I read this book almost nonstop. I was hooked from the first page. Wright’s prose is captivating, sexy, funny, heartbreaking, and full of insight and truth. She has a finely tuned sense of character development, making her characters real by showing us their flaws, but also their strengths. This novel works on every level. Love in Mid Air is highly recommended for readers who love smart, humorous women’s fiction, and for readers who like strong women characters. ( )