Your Bed or Mine?

The first entry in Halliday's Housewives Fantasy Club series is a satisfying romance that follows an odd-couple marriage. Besides their stubborn streak, Zada and Rick Clark have nothing in common outside of the bedroom—he likes things clean and healthy, while she prefers her mess and her fries supersized—and great sex isn't enough to keep their marriage together. Yet getting a divorce isn't so easy either: unable to agree on who wins the house and the dog, Zada and Rick are ordered by an ornery judge to resolve their property dispute within 90 days. Rick gleefully moves back home, and resumes his strict routine—instilled in him by his drill sergeant father—hoping to drive Zada out. Zada, of course, has her own plans for making Rick flee, and what begins as a high-stakes game of Survivor soon becomes an emotionally sticky battle in which sex is the ultimate weapon. Before the fight is over, Zada and Rick learn a lot about marriage and maturity, while catching their friends and neighbors in the crossfire. By setting her story post–"I do," Halliday provides a fresh, if not particularly complicated, romance, and introduces warm, funny characters that should serve well in future housewife fantasies. (Aug.)