Years ago This American Life ran a story about a man who said he thought often about having an affair. The way that unless you have one, you’ll never know what that experience is like.

“The Ten Year Affair” follows Cora and Sam, two parents of young children who find themselves drawn to each other despite both having seemingly stable relationships. Rather than stay away from temptation, they entwine their lives, but here is where the story splits and reality and imagination blur.

Incisively written and incredibly humorous and observant of the realities of millennial parents. “Another day passed. No major casualties.” Perfectly capturing the all encompassing nature of parenting young kids while also trying to figure out your post-kid identity. How careers and friendships and your relationship to your partner changes. How mostly you are the same person, but with a perspective shift so dramatic that everything looks different on the other side. Somers captures it all perfectly, in a wonderful novel well worth your time once the kids are in bed.

Loved this . Found it so interesting the parallel timelines and genuinely laughed out loud at moments. Hated the very ending lol.

Remember those choose your own adventure books? I’d always go back and read the other storylines to see if the path I had chosen was the best. It never felt like I was undoing the story I had picked, but instead, I was exploring a fantasy route. Life’s like that. You make choices, you explore options, but rarely do you get a do over.

We fantasize though, don’t we? That’s what Cora does in The Ten Year Affair. When she meets Sam at a play group, both are happy-ishly married with children, but there’s an attraction that can’t be ignored. After one stolen kiss, the affair begins in Cora’s head. It extends over years, sprouts hills and valleys, and starts to affect both Cora and Sam’s real lives until it’s difficult to keep track of what is real and what is imagined.

I enjoyed The Ten Year Affair more and more the deeper I got into it. The characters are flawed, imperfect, yet relatable. It’s a story of right vs wrong, moral vs desire. This is one to look out for.

Thank You to @simonbooks , @netgalley , and @theerinsomers for the early copy in exchange for my honest review!

A book about an affair where the affair is just an elaborate years long fantasy used as a coping mechanism for a banal day-to-day life? Such an interesting idea.

Erin Somers does a fantastic job of juggling the 'parallel dimensions'. The two worlds blend seamlessly together and it's interesting how one action in one world correlates to the other world. The themes of dreams and personal aspirations really blend well with the challenges of adulthood and family responsibility. Somers also does a great job at writing tension and drama between the characters that keeps you sucked in for the whole book. I loved the sense of humor throughout the book and her writing was great as well.

Reminded me a lot of All Fours and Big Swiss as well so if you liked those definitely check this one out.

This was such a smart, witty approach to well-worn subject matter. The characters' motivations were clear and sharp, even as the imagined and real scenarios bobbed back and forth. Loved it!

I don't quite know how to rate this book if I'm being honest. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Did it frustrate me? Yes. Was it fast-paced? Yes. Did the multiple timelines drive me nuts? Yes. I'm giving this 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

The writing and the storytelling had me hooked from the beginning, ringing true what it's like to be a woman and a parent just trying to navigate life and feeling seen. The alternating realities took me for a loop until about 30% into the book, when it dawned on me that there wasn't actually an affair taking place (or was there?!). I would've enjoyed shorter chapters with clear delineations of reality vs. fantasy, but that's just me. The excellent writing is what kept me going.

Thanks NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced copy in exchange for my review.

While still on maternity leave, Cora, happily married to nonfiction editor Eliot, meets Sam, a cute dad in her playgroup—and wants to fuck him. They escape the other suburban hipster parents and share coffee, and even a kiss, but ultimately, he gently rejects her, and instead, they become good friends, then their families become good friends, and they even form a pod during the pandemic. In an effort to avoid temptation, they decide to deliberately befriend one another’s spouses, but the result is it eventually leads to Cora hearing Jules complain about Sam, contemplate having an affair of her own, and then Cora has to be a supportive friend through the fallout when Jules, an ambitious attorney, gets dumped by her younger lover.

Throughout all of this drama, Cora and Sam do not act on their desires; Cora, however, imagines their illicit affair in great detail, from hotel sex to an unwanted pregnancy, distracting herself from laundry and her dead-end job and lack of sex from her husband, while maintaining a flirty relationship and respecting the boundaries Sam sets. Their tragic trajectory is inevitable, and when they do give in, Cora's fantasy life is expended on the mundanity of her marriage: daydreaming about eating popcorn in bed with her mostly impotent (due to pot and anti-depressants) husband, and taking care of her middle grade children while with her lover. The premise and format was clever, and there was never any confusion as to where, or when, we were in the fantasy affair/real affair timeline.

The cover art, an awkward reach of a man's hands to a woman's, does not do the plot justice, or match the image I have in my head of a more casual Cora and Sam, but if you can get past the terrible graphic, this was a rich and compelling read that had a very GenX feel to it: the apathy and going through the motions and doing the minimum and not trying to hard or caring too much. It would fit in as well with Thoreau's premise that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Somer's exploration of marriage, adultery, fidelity, and family is by turns banal, witty, poignant, and spot on. Cora's dissatisfaction is real, frustrating, and believable. So is the resolution.

I received a free, advance reader's review copy of #TheTenYearAffair via #NetGalley, courtesy of #Simon&Schuster. A copy of this review will post to HLBB 10/20/2025.

Erin Somers’ writing is clever and endearing, and I enjoyed this more than I expected. Characters were totally relatable and believable. It was refreshing to read a plot like this. I would enjoy reading more of Somers’ work.
Thanks to Simon & Schuster and Netgalley for the e-ARC!

A dual-timeline story about a mom stuck between routine and desire. The premise hooked me, but it was the raw honesty that kept me reading. Erin Somers captures the ache of everyday life perfectly.

The world has no shortage of novels where something dramatic and life-altering shakes a character’s foundation. But what about the stories that reflect the quieter reality most of us actually live—the kind where you slip into marriage, then parenthood, then a lifetime of routine? Where nothing major happening can itself become its own existential shift. This is what Erin Somers captures so masterfully in The Ten Year Affair.
On the surface, Cora’s life looks enviable: a well-paying (if lackluster) job capped by her own glass ceiling, a handsome husband (whose depression meds have left him with ED), healthy kids (who make her both grateful and desperate for her youth), a circle of mom friends (who won’t stop bragging about their infants’ potty-training prowess), and a Hudson Valley home (complete with a mushroom sprouting from a crack in the floor). But scratch the surface, and the cracks reveal themselves—making Cora unflinchingly human and deeply relatable.
Like countless women in their mid-thirties, Cora seeks escape from the dull ache of routine. When she meets a dad in her parent group, her timelines split: in one, she indulges the fantasy; in the other, it remains just that. While the dual timelines occasionally feel messy or cumbersome, the characters are richly developed and achingly real. This is a novel that holds up a mirror, asking readers to confront the ways they too escape their own lives. Perfect for readers who loved “All Fours,” and “Fleishman is in trouble”

Hands down, this is one of the funniest books I've ever read, probably because it's so unforgivingly savage about just how weird it is to be thrown together with a random group of adults based solely on the fact that you all have kids the same age.

The Ten Year Affair is a mostly fantastical look at what happens between Cora and Sam after a chance meeting at a baby group. In one timeline, they give in to their undeniable chemistry and embark on an ill-advised affair, and in another, they remain (mostly) platonic friends. Honestly, It's a clever literary trick that felt fresh and kept me enthralled.

Luckily, this isn't a standard marriage-in-trouble book, but rather a comical meditation on what many modern, long-term monogamist heterosexual relationships look like at their best and their worst. All of the side characters resemble people you know and mostly wish you didn't, while the main characters are flawed, but always relatable.

Highly highly recommend this one!

“She longer for him while she longed for him. She yearned while she yearned. She pined while she pined, and so on.”

Add this book to my “housewife obsesses and obsesses” list, which includes books such as My Husband, Madwoman, The Most, etc etc. This book was so fascinating, our MCs narration takes us on two parallel timelines. Every little sentence feels carefully created. This book has more erotic content then I’m normally a reader of, and yet it felt natural. Seamlessly integrated in the story. Normally I also detest pandemic mentions in a story, even though it is so vital to our current day. This story did it in a way I found refreshing, using it as a foil to continue exploring the relationships that were changing already. I really enjoyed this read!!

It would be easy to pass on this book based on the title alone. And while “the affair” is certainly a huge aspect of the plot, it’s more than that.

Cora meets Sam at a parenting group get-together. There’s an obvious spark between them, but they’re both married. Cora then begins crafting an inner world of fantasy, playing out her desires with Sam in her head to get through the tedium of every-day life (sad millennial white woman who settled down too young).

And Sam? He’s there too. But it isn’t really about him. It’s about who Cora is—or rather who she might be—in another world beyond the banality of adulthood, beyond laundry and school pick-up lines and the upper-middle-class dinner parties.

Erin Somers’ writing is sharp and witty, and I enjoyed this more than I expected. Thanks to Simon & Schuster and Netgalley for the e-ARC!

This novel didn’t really live up to its potential. The synopsis sounded so interesting to me, but the final product left me feeling frustrated and underwhelmed. I will say that the writing style was an absolute standout for me. Erin Somers’ was beautiful and poignant. The two main characters had incredible chemistry, but I found the overall story to be too dramatic for me. I liked the quirky moments more than I liked the sentimental overtones. Good book but I wanted more urgency and excitement.

What I am guessing is going to be a big book of the fall, THE TEN YEAR AFFAIR is not quite what the title suggests. There ARE two couples, two sets of kids, a meet sort of cute at a baby group. But most of the affair is the what ifs. Attraction, loyalty, the reckoning with the banality of life is all laid out on the table via a sad millennial woman living in gorgeous Beacon, NY from 2015 to 2020.

This is an extremely light plot novel, with character development happening over 10 years. It is fascinating to watch the characters change and morph, but can also be very depressing too! A lot of this could be categorized as white people problems and I found myself rolling my eyes at times, but I also cannot deny I saw myself in the characters at times too, especially when relating to being a new parents. This is a fascinating idea for a book and I cannot wait to to see what everyone else thinks.

This is the story of young parents Cora and Sam, who meet at a new baby class and bond over disliking the same mother. They strike up a friendship that soon turns into more, or does it? This was not a straightforward affair story as the title suggests, but more of a "what if?". The story changes from a world in which Cora and Sam don't strike up a romance, but remain friends, and one where they begin an affair. Sometimes the realities switch from paragraph to paragraph, which was clever and I think pulled off as well as it could, but it didn't work for me. I LOVED the first chapter of this book, the writing is excellent and Cora's voice was so relatable and funny, but I couldn't keep up with the format.

Premise was interesting but also not my favorite and the storyline just felt repetitive. Plus the characters felt unlikable.

At first, the book drew me in, but the author’s use of reality and Cora’s imaginings were so frequent that the lines became blurred. For me, the story became redundant and I couldn’t wait for it to end.

The premise sounded great, but when I started to read it, I was just uncomfortable. I’m not sure if it was the way it was written or I just couldn’t get into the characters but, either way, I didn’t really love it.

This is readable and enjoyable even though nothing really happens. Cora meets Sam at a baby group and, even though she’s happily-ish married, she’s attracted to him. Sam’s wife and Cora’s husband join them at dinners and parties. They raise their children and endure the ups and downs of married life and life in general, including the pandemic, which put a strain on everyone, but really tested the boundaries of marriage when you were stuck together with two kids who can’t sit still in front of a computer long enough to learn anything.

There were some genuinely funny moments in this. There are affairs real and imagined. The sex scenes aren’t titillating but matter-of-fact.

NetGalley provided an advance copy of this novel, which RELEASES OCTOBER 21, 2025.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for the eARC!

There were some funny parts in the book, (love dark humor), but the dual timeline narrative was honestly confusing at times. Ending seemed rushed. Expected a little more with it than what we were given.