Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I knew going in this book was not a continuation of the love story and personal struggle to find success that was in Julie Powell's first book Julie & Julia. I knew it was about her long term adulterous affair and oddly sought out internship at a Butcher Shop. But I thought it would still reflect her humor, her relatible bouts of TMI and some sort of arc of redemption or success. If that's what you are hoping for too, keep walking, don't read this book! It details her two year long affair, her yearlong plus despair after her lover ended the affair, and her ongoing minimal regard for her husband's anguish before, during, and after (he knew virtually the whole time). It is frankly the most selfish, self absorbed, self delusional book I've ever read. Everything is couched in terms of well "I needed this", "I had to do this". She justifies the whole thing by saying well our picture perfect marriage really wasn't picture perfect and sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do to find yourself and find your way back. Picture Gov Mark Sanford (remember him?) but this time openly having his affair with his Argentinian soulmate for two years and then being so soul wrenchingly broken when his mistress ends it that he leaves home for a year plus, first with a job as a butcher in a town so far from home he has to rent a nearby apartment, then after that ends he starts traveling solo to countries around the world just to be around butchers, eat an enormous amount of meat, sulk and obsess continually about his lost lover. Then finally decides that the sight and touch of his spouse no longer repluses him and he goes home to get on with his marriage and two days into that has lunch with his old lover and tells his wife they will continue to get together as they have alot to "talk about" but that he promises they probably won't sleep together any more because his ex mistress doesn't seem to want to. Picture that and you got the jist of this whole book. If that doesn't sound appetizing then picture all the endless desciptions of butchering slabs of dead animals, or better yet actually slaughtering live animals. I could have lived with all glory details if there just hadn't been so much needless cruelty. I'm talking about what she did to her husband, not the animals. No amount of self exploration justifies carrying on a obessive love affair for two years while still sleeping in the same bed with your husband every night. Knowing that he has read your sobbing, obsessive, pleading texts to your lover both during the affair and the year after when you are so tightly clinging to your lost love that you stalk him both physically and cyber-ly. All while you claim to love your husband like no other, that you are so close you read each other's thoughts, but oh by the way for now (I'm sure it will clear up at some point) the idea of being around him, or touching him kinda makes you wanna hurl. Once you get married I believe you are no longer entitled to sow oats and figure your spouse will stand patiently by cuz "you need this". If Julie Powell had half the guts she had in her first book she would have divorced her husband and committed herself to her new path. Or she would have found a way to stay faithful and make needed improvements in her less than picture perfect marriage. She chose neither path. In fact she never chooses between any two things. She wants and therefore she haves and haves and haves. Consequences be dammed. And then she writes a book about it. A book filled with so much longing and need for her lover that her husband only skimmed the book, so much TMI that her mother is not allowed to read the book, and many of her friends refuse to read the book. And me? Well I'm sorry I read it. And I predict you will be too.