Reviewed by me for Reader’s Favorite.

Betrayal comes in all shapes and sizes. After reading Kathryn Taylor’s Two Minus One: A Memoir, I am pretty confident that there is no easy way to segregate an honest person from a dishonest one. Jim said all the right words and stood by Kathryn and her daughters for many years. He reassured her time and again that he was never going to give up on her. Although Kathryn told her on many occasions that she was not looking for romance in her life, he did not deter from pursuing her. How long can you close your heart from the idea of love when someone would just not stop showing you the beautiful possibilities of life with them? Being human and thinking that she deserved another chance at happiness, Kathryn finally gave in and married the guy.
For eight years, she believed her life to be a fairy tale with this man in her arms. And then it happened. With no warning or discussion, Jim simply announced that he was done with the marriage. A sudden end to something beautiful has the power of breaking the strongest souls, and that’s exactly what happened to Kathryn. She could not believe her world had crashed in a blink. Her health took a toll and she felt as if she had neither desire nor energy left to move on in life.

When your life appears to be all sunshine and rainbows, even the slightest diversion from the happiness could come as a shock. Imagine being in a marriage where your partner never complained about anything and then suddenly announced that he wanted to end the marriage. How would you convince your brain that it’s really over? Two Minus One: A Memoir by Kathryn Taylor is the manifestation of everything that you would feel in such a situation. She had left her normal life behind for Jim: she sold her house, moved to a different place, quit her job to support this man, whom she considered to be the love of her life. She suffered the loss of everything that she held close to her, yet with the help of her friends and daughters found the strength to move on.

Divorce is not an easy thing to deal with at any age and to be thrown into this process at the age of sixty is really devastating. However, Two Minus One: A Memoir brings a ray of hope into the lives of people who are going through such a phase. In her memoir, Kathryn Taylor has outlined all the tools that helped her become a stronger version of herself. If it weren’t for her husband’s betrayal, it is quite possible that she never would have tapped into the immense strength and talent that was deep inside of her. Written in a first-person narrative, Two Minus One moves at a slow yet steady pace and shows its readers that there is light at the end of the tunnel. We may not always get closure but we can definitely grow from our hurtful experiences.
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