Londoner Lauren has just returned from best friend Elena's hen party and the main thing on her mind, besides getting home without stumbling drunk on her stairs, is who she'll be taking to the wedding as her plus-one. She's living the single life since she and Amos broke up and she doesn't have anyone lined up, but she doesn't want to show up alone. Lauren is stunned when a handsome dark-haired stranger is in her apartment, and even more so when he asks how the party went. Wait, what? His name is Michael and he says he's her husband, but that's not right. What's more, the decor in her apartment has changed and a picture of her and this guy is her phone's background. She doesn't know what on Earth is going on, but before she has a chance to figure things out, Michael goes into the attic to retrieve something and out comes a completely different man! And thus begins the saga of Lauren's magic attic and the endless stream of husbands it provides.
Cue the revolving door of husbands, and with each new man, Lauren finds something not quite right about them. Truth told, the first guy, Michael, was pretty great, but how was she to know she now has a magic attic that replaced each husband she sent up there? Now that she has discovered this bit of magic in the flat she co-owns with her sister, Nat, she puts it to work. Most don't last much time at all, but a few of them pique her interest.
There's Carter, the American, who really seems like someone she could fall in love with and spend forever. Then there's Felix, an older, wildly rich guy with a country estate and a jerk of a 13-year-old son. She could get used to this life of leisure, well, except for the son. There's Jason, the kind gardener/landscaper, and even Amos, her awful ex shows up a few times. She sends him to the attic immediately every time. Then one day a man named Bohai shows up and things are going well, if a bit boring, but then he insists he needs to get something from the attic and he is kind of insistent about it. Has she just discovered someone else with access to the magic of the attic from the other side? At least she finally has someone to talk to who understands.
She's tried explaining things to her sister, Nat, and her best friend, Elena, but they don't get it. The biggest thing is that time is marching on while she is swapping out husbands and since she has no idea how this started up, she must be careful. She wants certain things in whatever life she decides to keep, such as a happy marriage between Nat and her wife, Adela, and especially the existence of their two kids, young Caleb and baby Magda. Her downstairs neighbors, Troy and Maryam, were always friendly with her before and a lovely constant in her life, but now, this only happens with some of the husbands. In others, they might be indifferent or actually hate Lauren and her husband, and in one, the foursome have a peculiar relationship which comes as quite the shock to Lauren. This husband business takes quite a bit of fine-tuning and comes with a few risks, since some husbands are actually quite awful. At least she gets a reset on her bank account and job each time she gets a new hubby. Although sometimes the job isn't exactly desirable, but again, she can just takes sick days until husband swap time.
As the months pass, even Bohai finds happiness and moves on with his life, so Lauren determines that she must pick one husband and settle her life, but how to decide? Her life has become a which-way book where taking matters into her own hands could be dangerous, but she could also end up happily ever after.
The Husbands is a delightful tale about relationships, expectations, friendships and more. It's got comedy, drama, romance and a thrill here and there. I don't know what I was expecting in the way of an ending because there was no hard magic system in this book. The magic attic just showed up. But I can say that the ending was satisfying and touching and I liked the book.
