Why You'll Love This
A divorce drama told entirely through letters, memos, and legal filings — and somehow it's one of the most intimate reads you'll find.
- Great if you want: sharp legal drama with fully realized, witty characters
- The experience: brisk and clever — each document reveals character like a slow reveal
- The writing: Rieger builds an entire world through epistolary form — no exposition needed
- Skip if: you find document-style storytelling cold or distancing
About This Book
When Mia Meiklejohn Durkheim is served divorce papers in a crowded restaurant by her eminent physician husband, she arrives at her firm's offices furious, wounded, and ready for war. The attorney who reluctantly takes her case, Sophie Diehl, is a criminal lawyer who prefers her clients safely behind bars — certainly not sitting across from her demanding the dissolution of an eighteen-year marriage. What unfolds is a custody battle, a power struggle, and an excavation of a life that looked perfect from the outside. The emotional stakes are high and entirely recognizable: who gets to keep the story of a marriage, and at what cost?
What makes this novel genuinely distinctive is its form. Rieger tells the entire story through documents — legal letters, memos, emails, court filings, and personal notes — and it works beautifully. There is no conventional narration, yet character, humor, and heartbreak accumulate with surprising force. The epistolary structure rewards attentive readers; personality leaks through every formal salutation and carefully worded paragraph. It is a clever, disciplined piece of construction that trusts readers to do the work, and that trust feels like a small gift.