Marriages that Come with Baggage
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I was given a copy of this book by the author’s publicist. In return, I promised an honest review. This is it.
The Burning Side’s premise is very compelling. It features a couple whose nine-year marriage is on the brink of collapse. The night Leo tells April he wants a divorce is the same night their house is demolished by a kitchen fire. They have two small children, Sadie and baby Otto. Fortunately, all of the family makes it out of the house virtually unharmed. Even Sadie’s special doll, Bear Bear, survives the calamity.
The four of them move in with April’s parent’s, Deb and Billy Russo. And since we are at the family home, April’s siblings show up from time to time as well. Thus we meet Josie and Cameron, and Cameron’s fiancé, Rachel. From all appearances, the Russos have always been a picture-perfect family.
The story unfolds in first person narrative from three alternating speakers, April, Leo, and Deb.
From April and Leo we learn how they met, married, and let their relationship slip away. It seems like an action on April’s part was the problem, but life is so much more complex than that, so don’t believe that for a minute. A lot of elements contributed to the demise of their relationship including the emotional scars of Leo’s abandonment by his parents as a young child and let’s not forget the stresses of having two small children.
Deb has a lot to reveal as well – about the past and the future. Let’s just say that the always-picture-perfect family did not start out that way. And that the family’s future has a problem looming that will impact all of them – even Rachel.
This is Sarah Damoff’s second novel. The first one was called The Bright Years. In both books, a marriage is adversely impacted by the scars the husband brings to the marriage from his childhood. In the first book, the husband grew up in a home where an alcohol addiction reigned. And this new book is all tied up in Leo’s childhood. If your parents abandon you as a child, how do you ever trust any relationship to survive? And with such a legacy, isn’t it mandatory to ask this question: Was Leo destined to help his marriage implode with a self-fulfilling prophecy?
And that is what I liked best about this book, its insistence that sometimes we need to look to the past to understand current problems. We all enter new relationships with baggage from our earlier years. Large or small, those issues are present and need to be reckoned with. This book is a great reminder of that fact.
The Burning Side is scheduled to be released on May 19, 2026. One can pre-order it on Amazon.
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Click here to learn more about The Burning Side on Amazon.
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