"It's her theory about how each woman in today's America decides—either consciously or subconsciously—one of three different types she'll become to get what she wants in what's basically still a man's world."
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All the Difference: A Novel by Kaira Rouda Real You Publishing Group
book review by Susan J. Illis
The lives of several Columbus, Ohio women intersect in Kaira Roud's riveting, engrossing mixture of suspense, mystery, and women's fiction.
On the surface, Ellen seems to have an enviable life—wealthy, beautiful, with a palatial home and designer clothes, and no need to work other than volunteering to raise funds for charity. However, her husband is a serial cheater who won't consider adopting the baby she has just learned she'll never have, even with the most expensive fertility treatments available.
Successful realtor Janet finds herself at a crossroads—literally—when she walks in on her husband, in flagrante delicto, with Angie, their very young assistant.
Television anchor Laura Mercer is desperate to make her leap into a bigger market and will go to any lengths to break the news story that will garner the attention of the networks. Friends and lovers are no more than stepping stones on her way to the top. Her greatest ambition, though, is to exact revenge on the one person who truly hurt her.
Scarred by her parents' divorce and her father's desertion to a younger woman, chain-smoking, black-clad Maddie is drawn to the men who will never commit, thus not challenging her own fear of commitment.
In contrast, Angie is looking for her ticket to wealth—a shiny-shoe wearing, wealthy husband who will take care of her so that she will no longer have to work long hours at low-paying jobs. That she continually sets her sights on those who are already wed—thus dooming from the outset her dreams of matrimony—does not seem to penetrate her rather dim consciousness.
Francis, deserted by her husband after decades of marriage, reinvents herself as a successful advertising executive after a chance encounter in the soap aisle of the grocery store. But can even she maintain the squeaky clean image of her client?
The many ways in which the lives of these women will become intertwined is remarkable, as is the fact that despite their individual success, their lives are nonetheless defined in large part by the men in them. Interspersed throughout the novel are reminiscences of an unidentified little girl who suffered a childhood filled with abuse and finally the merciful desertion by her mother.
As first one, then another, and finally a third of Ellen's husbands dies under circumstances that could be tragic accidents, but could also be murder, sympathy builds for the vulnerable, hapless woman who appears to be so unlucky in love. Unlucky, but also plucky, with subsequent marriages following quickly after the burial of her last husband.
Despite the multitude of red herrings, discovering both the identity of the abused child and the fates of Ellen's husbands is less of a challenge than Rouda perhaps intended. Her novel defies easy classification. Written in the tradition of Susan Isaacs, but without the distinctive voice, All the Difference is not a whodunit. Nor is it, despite the elements of murder and a suburban setting, a cozy mystery, a la Leslie Meier or Diane Mott Davidson, that so saturated the market in the 1990s.
Rouda excels at telling a memorable story while interweaving convoluted plots and relationships so skillfully that they seem logical rather than confusing. Some of the characters lack depth, while at least one shows Jekyll and Hyde extremes that are difficult to reconcile. A few minor shortcomings, however, do not make Rouda's latest book any less satisfying a read. There are few things more entertaining than stories revealing the seamy underside of suburban life.
RECOMMENDED by the US Review