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by Hilary Boyd
In this touching, romantic tale of new attraction and old loyalties, Jeanie is on the brink of turning sixty, and the man she's been married to for more than half of her life has abandoned the marital bed.
When Jeanie's husband George retreats from his conjugal duties, she is deeply hurt and very confused: Has she done something wrong? Is he in love with someone else? Her pained bewilderment turns to anger as he remains unable, or unwilling, to provide answers.
The bright spot of Jeanie's week is Thursday, the day she takes her granddaughter to the park. There, one day, she meets Ray—age-appropriate, kind-hearted, easygoing, and downright sexy. In short, he is everything that George is not.
As her relationship with Ray begins to blossom and she begins to think that her life might hold in store a bold second act, she begins to wonder if she has the courage to take a step off the precipice of routine and duty and into the swirling winds of romance.
"[A] ... tender and intriguing love story.... Boyd is as canny as Joanna Trollope at observing family life and better than Trollope at jokes." - The Daily Mail
"Puts the 'sex' back into 'sexagenarian." - The Times
"A warm and well-written case for love affairs in later life." - Daily Telegraph
"A sincere tale of late-in-life love. ... Boyd's delicate rendering of Jeanie's interior grounds the novel, and readers will root for her to finally get her own. ... A poignant love story featuring refreshing characters in their 60s." - Kirkus Reviews
"A poignant portrait of a stale marriage and the ties that bind couples together." - Chicklit Club
This information about Thursdays in the Park was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Hilary Boyd grew up in London. Educated at Roedean, an all-girls boarding school in Sussex, she went on to become a nurse and marriage counselor. In her 30s, she went back to school to earn a degree in English Literature from London University. After graduating, she became a health journalist, writing a Mind, Body, Spirit column for the Daily Express. She has published six non-fiction books on health-related subjects such as depression, step-parenting, and pregnancy. She has been writing novels in her spare time for 20 years. Thursdays in the Park is the first to be published. Her second novel, Tangled Lives, was released in the UK in early 2013, and she is working on her third, Straight To The Heart, about a middle-aged nurse who falls in love with a mountaineer. Hilary is married to film director and producer Don Boyd (Aria, Scum and War Requiem). She has three daughters and lives in London.
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