1. Kate Pedley has made a career in the hospitality industry and has recently begun a high-level job with an international hotel chain. In LOVER, she describes several hotels, good and bad. How do these hotels --- their private rooms and public spaces --- mirror human relationships and feelings? How does the epigraph by Rumi foreshadow what happens to Kate?

2. Are there signs that Kate and Adam’s marriage is in trouble before Kate finds the email exchange with Louise? Why is Kate suspicious of Adam?

3. How do Kate’s daughters respond to their parents’ separation? What kind of mother is Kate? Is Adam a good father? How do they help Milla and Hester understand what is happening?

4. What is Kate’s relationship with her mother? Her opinion of her parents’ marriage? Do these change after she and Adam separate?

5. What are the lies that Adam tells Kate? Why is he unfaithful? Why does he walk out on his family in the middle of the night?

6. It takes Kate a long time to realize that her husband left before he was gone. How does she come to understand the full extent of Adam’s betrayal? What does she do to cope? Where does she find support and refuge?

7. Why does Kate need to talk to Louise and Lorna? Do these conversations hurt or help?

8. What kind of people are Trish and Don? What don’t they understand about hotels and the people who work in them that causes Palazzio Hotel Corporation to fail? Who has Kate known and what has she experienced to shape her opinion of their behavior?

9. LOVER is told completely from Kate’s point of view. If Adam were the narrator, what would be his version of the story?

10. Kate purchases self-help books almost obsessively, but rarely gets around to reading them. What are some of the books? What insights do they provide about Kate’s state of mind? Where does she eventually find solutions to her problems?

11. What does Kate mean when she says, “I hadn’t married my friend; I’d married my lover.” How might Kate and Adam have been better friends?

12. As Kate sorts through her possessions, what does she keep and what does she discard? How do these decisions help her work through her emotions? What does she come to value?

13. How does each of Kate’s interactions with men help her gain the confidence to live on her own?

14. In his Christmas card to Kate, Adam writes, I love you. I never stopped loving you and I never will. How is his concept of love different than Kate’s? How does she feel about his Christmas gift?

15. Adam seems to see his betrayals of Kate as casual, understandable, perhaps even forgivable. Kate experiences his actions as dishonest and cruel. She feels that he has turned into a stranger. For her, their separation is a period of deep grieving and hard work to understand what happened. During that time, what does Kate learn about herself, her family, and her marriage? What are her victories? Her failures? Why is Adam surprised when she chooses divorce over reconciliation? Does LOVER have a happy ending?