Told from four peoples’ perspective, the mother/wife Terri who leaves her family; her husband and two children this is an ambitious book which I enjoyed but didnt love. As with many kaleidoscopic works, it’s easier to care about some characters than others and often a change in perspective is accompanied by a longing to be back with another protagonist.
Very glad to have had the opportunity to read and it has stayed in my imagination.
Thank you

Terri leaves her husband David and their two daughters for Lucas. The twenty five years of marriage comes to an end after two years of Terri feeling nothing towards the life that she was leading. Schermer lets her readers spend a year post breakdown with the characters, their children and their lovers.
Every character finds themselves exposed to vulnerability in a way they didn't anticipate. There is anger, loneliness, desperation, arguments, plenty conversations that go everywhere and nowhere (which, to be fair, is expected) and David finds himself in a new relationship as well. With the change their mother triggered, the daughters deal with the way young adolescent girls would - the elder one rebels while the younger one isolates. The new relationships pose new challenges to the already shaky dynamics and by the end of the book they are all at different stages in their lives - something new, something ending, something broken, like life constantly changing.

Wanted to like this more. The book was confusing.

Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free, it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

Marijke Schermer’s Love, If That’s What It Is tells the story of the breakdown of Terri and David’s twenty-five-year marriage from the perspectives of themselves, their lovers and their children over the course of a year or so.

Terri walks out on her husband and children leaving David devastated. She has a lover but insists that Lucas is not the cause but the catalyst. Their two children want them to stop rowing: fifteen-year-old Krista, caught up in her own crush, is disgusted by the sex text she finds on her mother’s phone while Ally is left contemplating the cuddly toys she knows she’s outgrown and trying to cope with her loneliness. David finds himself a lover online, excited by Sev’s liberated attitude towards relationships and sex, but still trying to understand how things have gone so badly wrong in his marriage. By the end of the novel a messy kind of resolution is reached.

Misunderstandings, hurt, puzzlement and occasional moments of happiness abound in this immersive, absorbing novel. Overarching it all, as the title suggests, is the question what is love? Writing with great empathy and compassion, Schermer is unafraid to let her characters seem unsympathetic at times and there’s the odd flash of humour running through her quietly powerful, often very subtle book, expertly translated by Hester Velmans. Highly recommended.