In this reverse love story set in Paris and London, which Glamour hailed as one of the “10 Best Books to Add to Your Summer Reading List Right This Second,” a failed monogamist attempts to woo his wife back and to answer the question: Is it really possible to fall back in love with your spouse?

Despite the success of his first solo show in Paris and the support of his brilliant French wife and young daughter, thirty-four-year-old British artist Richard Haddon is too busy mourning the loss of his American mistress to a famous cutlery designer to appreciate his fortune.

But after Richard discovers that a painting he originally made for his wife, Anne—when they were first married and deeply in love—has sold, it shocks him back to reality and he resolves to reinvest wholeheartedly in his family life…just in time for his wife to learn the extent of his affair. Rudderless and remorseful, Richard embarks on a series of misguided attempts to win Anne back while focusing his creative energy on a provocative art piece to prove that he’s still the man she once loved.

Skillfully balancing biting wit with a deep emotional undercurrent, this “charming and engrossing portrait of one man’s midlife mess” (Elle) creates the perfect portrait of an imperfect family—and a heartfelt exploration of marriage, love, and fidelity.

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, June 2014: One way to read Courtney Maumâ??s funny, smart, frothy first novel is as a primer on why cheating on your spouse is a terrible idea--especially when your wife is beautiful, and French, and a lawyer, and the mother of your child, and she loves you. Another take: monogamy is hard and, as the protagonist puts it, sometimes we need a â??secret line to something private.â?? Or maybe thatâ??s just a lame excuse for self-indulgence. Richard Haddon is a British artist living the perfect ex-patâ??s life with his wife, Anne, and daughter in Paris. When his mistress dumps him, and Anne learns of the affair, he struggles not only to win her back, but to revive his passion for fidelity. Richard can be a maddening doofus, and whether you root for him or not may depend on your taste for rom-com sweetness. (Thereâ??s a written-for-the-screen quality at work here; Iâ??ve already mentally cast Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.) What lifts the novel above the love lost and found tale is Maumâ??s well-drawn cast of quirky supporting characters and her exploration of the creative process, primarily Richardâ??s attempt to rediscover himself as an artist. Is it better to create safe, commercial art and take care of your family or take a risk on art that matters? And is a U.S. passport in a washing machine full of oil a brilliant anti-war protest or just weird? At the core of this clever debut is a bigger question: how do you recover from infidelity and become a better man? --Neal Thompson

Recommended to book clubs by 2 of 2 members.