There's always that one person at a party who, upon being asked "How are you?" launches into a lengthy tale full of details and too much information, boring the people around her. That's what "The Pretend Wife" is like.

The main character, Gwen, is ostensibly a happily married woman who lives in a nice home with a charming husband and a decent job. Out of the blue comes an old flame, Elliot. Elliot has told his dying mother that he's married and now needs a woman to pose as his wife when he goes home for the weekend.

Gwen winds up filling this space and, over a few days, realizes there is something genuine about this pretend relationship whereas her real marriage is a pretense.

On top of that, Gwen is still preoccupied with the death of her mother, who drowned when she was a little girl. Her father won't talk about it, and Gwen knows few details.

It's not the worst setup for a story, but Bridget Asher doesn't tell it well. "The Pretend Wife" is retrospective; instead of walking in Gwen's shoes, learning with her, watching events unfold as she does, we're stuck reading analyses of everything that happened and what Gwen now realizes everything means. Asher relies on Gwen's feelings and emotions rather than conflict to propel the plot, but Gwen isn't interesting enough to keep the story moving. She's wannabe philosophical and not at all thought-provoking.

Asher likely hopes the book will lead us to question the meaning of love and relationships. Wrong. Our questions are more like, "Why did Gwen quit going to therapy?" and, "Why didn't she check microfiches at the library for details of her mother's death?" A woman drowning and a child being rescued is at least a brief in the local newspaper.

Asher doesn't even try to redeem the book by forcing Gwen to make a difficult decision between her real husband and her pretend one. Instead, she creates a loophole, allowing Gwen to live happily ever after sans guilt. What a letdown.

What a letdown all around. "The Pretend Wife" doesn't live up to its potential, and even if Gwen has a happy ending, she leaves some disgruntled readers in her wake.