Book: Climbing the Walls (Hart & Cole Book 1)

Author: Sacha Fortune, 2018

What if you were given a manual on married life as part of your wedding gift? What if the manual spelt out all the dos and don’ts, and provided detailed information on childcare? Would life be boring or more interesting?

Climbing the Walls centers on the life of Nicole and Kris, a couple and parents to two young children. Their marriage starts off by raising a question on sex - how much is too little, enough or too much? Does their sex life measure up to what the outside world made up of their friends and coworkers imagine it to be?

The couple’s life changes with the entry of their two children, now everyone gets busy, struggling to balance work with childcare. The suspense created at the start of each day kept me glued to the book, waiting for the end of each school day - who will pick their allocated child for the day on time, who will be late?

Going to bed in the night is more than that. Sacha unveils a new world once the bedroom door closes. What discussion topics occupy their time, sometimes well into the next morning? Nothing close to what many people would guess. Sacha unveils the couples’ enjoyment of one another, trials, temptations, and plans for their future.

Sacha takes us to the workplaces of Nicole and Kris and reveals their different personalities, competencies and how they relate with their friends and colleagues. The author got me reflective on how individuals can have different personalities for home and place of work. I started to wonder, can a man or woman be attracted to the opposite sex and it ends just there, especially because they are married? Sacha provides numerous examples that will get any reader to look at their work mates differently, then inwards to question their own position.

What kept me reading the book?

As the author writes at the beginning of the book, “They’re a little of me, a little of you, a little of the angel we strive to be…”

I kept opening the next page in search of answers to questions that came to mind:

1. Is marriage about trials, whereby individuals spend their life trying to find out what would annoy or create happiness for the other?

2. Are friendships outside of marriage “real,” or limited to what the other partner allows?

3. What is the role of children in a marriage? Would marriages of the various couples in the book survive if they did not have young children to raise?

4. What is forgiveness? Is adultery the worst crime in marriage, how do couples deal with it whenever one of both of them commit adultery?

Sacha’s writing style held my attention to the last page: the character descriptions revealed day today people I would encounter with at a place of work, bookstore, parent at school and more. I could see Kris playing with Nikita as they ate breakfast, or Nicole hurrying out of the house early in the morning with a sleepy Khailam in her arms.

Reading the book kept me reflective on issues of friendships in and out of marriage, parenthood, work and employment, and what it takes to live with another adult.

I recommend Climbing up Walls to anyone in a marriage, contemplating marriage or on the outside but longs to learn something about the married people they work with or interact with in life.

Though there were a few areas in the book that lagged, like the description when Kris first encounters Carrina, I still gave the book five stars. Sacha communicated such a delicate matter, struggles in marriage and the threads that help hold it together in a way that keeps one opening the next page until the last sentence of the book.

Thanks for reading this book review. I endeavour to write a review on the books that capture my interest. Please recommend books for me to read next.