Well-written. That’s what comes to mind first as I finish Good Company. Not having read The Nest, this author’s last novel, I wasn’t sure what I was in for. But the blurb caught my eye – a woman finding her husband’s “lost” wedding band in an envelope, tucked away in a file cabinet in the garage where he had clearly, deliberately place it. I thought it might be an interesting drama about marriage.

After the reading, I’m not sure I’d call it drama. It’s more about a journey, and not only of the couple with the suddenly-found wedding band. There’s this couple and another, their best friends and sometime collaborators in secret-holding, but all with down-deep good hearts. There’s also the daughter of the wedding-band couple. That makes Good Company a study in marriage, family, and friendship, and the life events that test all three.

The issue of the wedding band is peripheral. The relationship between Flora and Julian was troubled from the start – but troubled in a familiar way for those of us who’ve been married a while.  These two people love each other but have very different and difficult needs. The discovery of the wedding band and what it reveals is simply a catalyst for the examination of these needs.

Thanks to lots of back and forth in time, the characters are perfectly drawn. They are complex but believable. That said, there were times I felt I was learning things I didn’t need to know about characters with little impact on the plot. But then, this book is definitely character-driven, not plot-driven.

If character-driven appeals to you, try Good Company.

BTW, I initially resisted this book, in part because it was a Read With Jenna pick, not to mention an Amazon Editor’s pick. And while I wasn’t as wild about it as those sources, I found it a good read.