I was incredibly challenged by The State of Affairs, which was surprising as I'm nowhere near marriage or an affair. This bears witness to Esther Perel's main idea: everyone owes it to themselves and their loved ones to negotiate their romantic relationships, even before infidelity becomes an issue.

If you've heard Perel's TED talk or appearances on The Longest Shortest Time & Dear Sugar, she has *so* much more to say in The State of Affairs! Even if relationship therapy books aren't really your niche (same here), I'd still recommend spending the extra time with her table-shaking ideas. On practically every other page, Perel includes real-life anecdotes from her clients and sessions to help ground her observations, which kept the book from veering too far into the psych world for a layperson like me.

You'll find yourself relating to many of the couples, and taking notes on Perel's questions of and responses to them. If anyone tells you this book didn't cause them to consider marriage in a new light, you can be pretty sure they're lying.