I'm only sorry it took me so long to get to this title because once I picked it up, I simply could not put it down. The author has a remarkable gift of developing her character so that you feel invested in her, and this book did just that. Her disappointment was palpable, her insecurities heart wrenching and relatable and I couldn't help but root for her! Lonnie infuriated me - any woman who has been cheated on (and even those who haven't) will find this story painful relatable. The story moved quickly and I enjoyed the flashback sequences. I am happy to have discovered this author and look forward to reading her earlier releases.

Have you ever wanted to jump in a book and punch a character? Have you ever wanted to jump into a book and hug a character? Well if not you can experience that here. This book really invites you to invest your heart into it and live it. Please accept that invitation

This is a good enough modern novel. I felt that it didn't really go anywhere and was a predictable plot. The story is of a friendship between two women. Bea and Awilda have known each other since high school. They are now in their thirties and both now have children and difficult marriages. We read about their life and friendship.

And Then There Was Me is a beautifully written novel about friendship, marriage, secrets, and betrayal. The protagonist of the story is Beatrice (Bea) Colon. Married with two children, Bea is pregnant for the third time as a surrogate for her husband's cousin. And she's pretty sure her husband, Lonnie, is cheating on her again. Needing support, Bea relies on lifelong friend, Awilda, who has troubles in her own marriage due to her husband's illness. No one knows Bea is hiding a secret of her own—she's bulimic, and she fights a daily battle not to binge and purge. A terrible betrayal shatters her world, and Bea must find a way to piece her life back together again... and decide who will be in it.

I've had this ARC for a while, and I regret not reading it sooner. It's such a good book! Before I got halfway through the first chapter, I was firmly stuck in Bea's corner. My heart went out to her as I read about her insecurities, doubts about her husband's fidelity, and the discomfort she feels living in the upper class, non-diverse neighborhood that Lonnie insisted upon.

As much as I was wrapped up in Bea's present-day life, I found the flashbacks to her childhood even more interesting. It showed me why her friendship with Awilda was so important to her, as well as giving insight into how food became such an important (and distorted) part of her life. It also gave insight into why Bea forgave (or tolerated?) her husband's cheating so many times throughout their marriage.

The only thing I didn't like about this book was the ending. Not because it was bad, but because I didn't want it to end! I thought there was a bit more left, and when I realized I'd reached the end, I whined out a pathetic noooooo and kept stabbing my finger at my Kindle, as if that would cause another chapter to magically appear. Sigh. If only...

Overall, this was a great story with vividly written characters you either loved or hated... and maybe felt a bit conflicted about, as well. I thought the scenes regarding Bea's struggle with bulimia were thoughtfully written; the anguish Bea felt each time she couldn't find the need to binge and purge was palpable, and painful to read. Kudos to Ms. Johnson having handled such a delicate subject with sensitivity and empathy.

This is the first book I've read of Johnson's, but I doubt it will be the last. I highly recommend this to readers who enjoy reading women's fiction. This is a story you don't want to miss!

Bea is pregnant and at the beach with her husband, Lonnie, and trying to avoid the sun. Lonnie loves the beach but Bea hates it. Bea’s very good friend, Awilda, is at the beach with them. They have a tradition of spending Memorial Day weekend together there. Awilda is married to Derrick who has been diagnosed with MS. Awilda teaches school and loves to sew and design clothes. Bea and Lonnie have two children and Bea thinks Lonnie is cheating on her - again. Bea has worked as a NICU nurse, but is now a stay-at-home Mom. Lonnie has a good job and makes very good money which allows them to live in a nice neighborhood.

Right now, Bea is 7 months pregnant and a surrogate to Lonnie’s cousin and her husband who are unable to have children. Bea’s deep secret is that she has fought bulimia for years. When she becomes stressed, she has a difficult time trying to control it. Many times, she has binged on McDonald’s food and then purged it. Now, that she is pregnant and worried about her marriage, her stress is very high and bingeing is always on her mind.

The story follows Bea’s adoration of Lonnie and how she allows him to essentially control her. She feels he is so handsome and she is ordinary and so lucky to have him. The ups and downs of her daily life and worries of losing Lonnie, keep her like a tight wire ready to snap.

Will she be able to overcome her bulimia and take hold of her life and gain some real self-esteem? Is their marriage salvageable?

This was an interesting book with a good plot. For those of us who have not known what bulimia is like, it is easy to be skeptical and think that Bea is simply weak. But, unfortunately, it is a very common illness and one that takes hard work to overcome. I’m sure that many readers will enjoy the story.

Copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Entertaining, engaging read about Bea, a woman who has given so much of herself to her family and others that there is nothing left for herSELF. Sadeqa Johnson has a way with words that loops you into the story until you reach that moment that you can't. stop. reading. Really great read, much enjoyed!

A note... I feel like people in Bea's life didn't suffer enough for their slights against her. Though I am happy she managed to find her awakening and herself, I wanted husband and best friend to feel extremely more sorry than they did. I know that, IRL, things don't unwind in dramatic fashion... I think i was expecting explosive fireworks and instead there was a little putter. In the end, though, Bea got what she wanted.

3.5 stars. Be a is on holiday with her husband, Lonnie and their two children . be a is a surrogate with Lonnie's cousin Mena's baby. Be a is also bulimic. Her controlling husband, Lonnie, has recently moved then to the middle of middle to upper class suburb of Evergreen, New Jersey. Lonnie is also cheating on his wife again.

The author covers racism, eating disorders, class and infidelity in this book. It's pace is slow, with flashbacks to Bea's past. Don't let its pace stop stop you from reading this book as it is , all in all, a decent read.

I would like to thank NetGalley, St Martins Press and the author Sadeqa Johnston for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Bea hated the beach as she always felt hideous no matter what she wore. Awilda was her best friend and asked why she even came to the beach.But Bea’s husband Lonnie never listened to Bea when she said she didn’t want to go to the beach. Bea had know Awilda twenty some odd years. A Year ado Bea and Lonnie and their family had moved back to New Jersey. Bea was basically busy keeping up with Lonnie and the two kids now she was seven months pregnant and a surrogate for Lonnie’s cousin Mena. Bea hadn’t had any real fun in a while. Bea didn’t feel that staying home in the suburbs was who she was. Bea’s children were Chico who was ten and Alana who was five. Lonnie had already cheated on Bea several times and she wondered if he was again. Lonnie was very handsome and Bea was plain. Bea felt like an afterthought, invisible. Lonnie was cheating again and she couldn’t remember all the times he had cheated on her. He even had a son in Miami the same age as Alana. Bea stayed with Lonnie to preserve her family. But Bea binged and ate a lot then forced herself to bring it back up- Bulimia- She started putting food together to binge on when she found a diamond earring in the fold of Lonnie’s shirt. Before moving back to New Jersey Bea had worked as a nurse in NICU. when Mena called to see how Bea and the baby were doing it brought Bea back to her senses and she put the food back away and didn’t binge. When Bea went into labor she had tried to call her husband and his assistant said he had cleared his day and didn’t know where he was. Bea had an emergency c- section and could have died. Later she found out Awilda- her best friend who had introduced Bea and Lonnie- and Lonnie were having an affair and that was where Lonnie had been all day.
I had a hard time getting into this story but I did finish it. I had mixed feelings about it.It talked about Bulimia and i learned about that which was good of the author to show things about this disorder. Not6 enough is really known about this disorder. I don’t know why Bea stayed with Lonnie she wasn’t happy once she moved and just more affairs and just wanted Bea to forgive and forget. I I was happy to see Bea take charge of her life and he neighbor there to help her. I did feel this story dragged in places. There were things I liked and things I didn’t about this story. I would give it a 3.5 if I could.

This book was good it had some unresolved points in it but it was a tear jerker and funny and made you think of what you want in life and moving forward.

Sadeqa Johnson is masterful with a pen. ‘And Then There Was Was Me’ is a carefully composed and deeply intricate piece of work that explores the varied dimensions of a particular woman’s inner life. The story pulled me in, and Johnson’s detailed development of Bea, the novel’s main character, kept me engaged. Although the novel’s pacing was somewhat slow, flashbacks to Bea’s past made the storyline layered and intriguing. Johnson explored racism, colorism, class, eating disorders, infidelity, and, of course, the bittersweetness of love, with such thoughtfulness and nuance. At the start of the novel, I didn’t’ think I would like Bea, but, as I learned about her parents, about her fraught relationship with her mother, her complicated relationship with her best friend Awilda, and her woefully unfulfilling marriage to Lonnie, it difficult to not become invested her, to not believe that she deserved to finally find some solace and peace.

While the first 70% of the novel was very, very strong, the last 30 felt…overdone and rushed. A significant scene occurs in this part of the book, and I felt as though it took place too late in the novel and was resolved too quickly. The tension between Bea and Awilda, for instance, was not fully explored. Given all of the secrets, lies, and betrayal, the final chapter of the novel seemed unrealistic; it left me feeling empty and unsatisfied.

All in all, I enjoyed the novel immensely. I just wish that Johnson had given more time to parsing out how Bea and Awilda could find a way forward because, to me at least, it seemed like there wasn’t a way for them to move beyond what had transpired at all.

So, here's what I LOVED about 'And Then There was Me': the portrayal of the routine, the tedium, the ups and the downs of married and family life was spot on, as was the inner conflict about what to do when your marriage is imperfect, but the decision to stay or let it go is not a simple one. I loved that the author obviously thinks about and takes care in showing how the decisions and missteps of parents are often revisited in the lives of their children. This book was wonderful when I was reading those parts. I enjoyed her characters, in that they were vivid and visible, and at points relatable in their imperfection.

The main character Bea drove me positively insane. But Sadeqa Johnson did something that was brilliant in writing her: instead of telling us up front how basically ... well, screwed-up Bea is, through a series of gradual reveals, she peels back the surface layer of domestic perfection. Soon, Bea is an object of pity, and one with whom you are impatient. But again, the author begins to show us why and then we get it, and instead, we sympathize and even empathize with Bea. We even sympathize with her husband Lonnie, the lout who is a serial cheater, but seems in his own way to deeply love his wife. Lonnie and Bea's imperfect marriage is, in itself, fascinating.

And then came the plot twist involving Bea's best friend since childhood, Awilda. You can probably guess at what happens. I certainly did. But that wasn't my problem. My problem was the way it happened, the way the author revealed that it had happened, and the characters' responses to the reveal. That, for me, was where the book devolved into a Tyler Perry-esque, almost madcap moment where it all falls apart, and Awilda makes some admissions that are completely at odds with the character that she was, that had been painstakingly drawn in the previous hundred or so pages.

And finally, the reconstruction: will the marriage survive? Will the friendship endure? Will Bea become 'her own woman'? The resolution of those questions comes, but not in a way that made me feel satisfied, not because I didn't like the outcomes, but because it was then that the author seemed to stop writing and begin summarizing, either in her own voice, or those of her characters. I was disappointed, because it felt like after raising many, many provocative questions about love and marriage and friendship, at the end the author simply declined to explore them, and in the voices of her characters (in "So here's why I did this terrible thing to you" monologues) or in narrative (And so Bea realized that the reason she stayed with Lonnie was ...) simply TOLD you the answers to those questions. I would have liked this book so much more had she trusted the reader to discern and discover those answers, just as they had discovered the lie of Bea's apparently perfect life.

At times 'And Then There was Me' was an incredibly engaging read, so this is an author I will try again, but at the end of this book, I was a little let down.

Bea and Awilda have been friends for over 20 years. Bea is married to Lonnie. They have two children. Lonnie has decided that his family should live in the suburbs of New Jersey. Lonnie is an attractive man and Bea feels as though she is an ugly duckling. Bea is living a double life as well as Lonnie. Awilda is Bea's sounding board. Bea is a woman who has been dealt an indifferent hand. In And Then There Was Me, every woman can relate to some of the issues Bea was going through. I really wanted to like Awilda and Lonnie, but they both made me want to slap them. I liked the friendship that Bea had with her neighbor Joney. Every woman needs a neighbor like Joney. I would have like to see more of a story line between Bea and her mother, Bea and Joney, as well as Bea and Lonnie's cousin. The book was slow at the beginning, but it picked as the story progressed. It ended with no real resolution. Maybe there will be a sequel. Overall, it was a decent book.

Bea and Lonnie are married with 2 children. Bea is pregnant now being a surrogate for their cousin Mena. Bea has struggled with bulimia since she was a teenager. She and Lonnie have had marriage troubles for years because Lonnie has affairs. Lonnie is having another affair and being pregnant, Bea's bulimia has returned. Bea needs to decide if she can stay with Lonnie or leave Lonnie and make a life on her own. This is a story of family, secrets, and trying to be true to ones self. Thank you to NetGalley and Thomas Dunne Books for allowing me to read and review this book. I received an ARC of this book for an honest review.

For the first few pages I was thinking 'just get on with it, will you?” because the almost smug domesticity at the start of the book left me a bit bored. Then things started to ratchet up a notch with surprise after surprise being slowly unveiled.
There was also a very good reason for the attention to domestic details - to show the contrast between the various aspects of Bea's life. There were several OMG moments, and some real surprises, but there were also long lulls (too long maybe?).
My main gripe though is with the lack of closure at the end. I felt there was more story to be told and that everything seemed to more or less stop mid-chapter. It didn't feel like a natural ending point to me.
I also had a bit of a problem with what I saw as a certain lack of growth in Bea's character development - she is a bit of a doormat and despite her strong stance on one front, she is unable to make that same stance with someone else, despite their long history (sorry for being so cryptic, but I'm trying to avoid spoilers here!). I felt she failed to grasp the depth of the betrayal.

This book was quite good for its genre. Not one I read very often because they don't really seem to have the HEA endings that I like. It's usually more that life goes on. And I know that's how it is, but this is a book and that's what I want from my stories. But, all that aside, it really was good.

Ms. Johnson built her characters quite well so that you got to know them and know what to expect of them. The relationships were well written, too. The author built up the tension smoothly until it all blew up, and there were surprises to be had by all! Things I just hadn't suspected, though there were indications in hind sight. I just didn't want to think that would happen. But it did, and it made for a very intense story with some very raw and realistic moments.

I felt that Ms. Johnson dealt with Beatrice's compulsion very well. With its hold on her and her lack of control under stress. Her hiding the issue from people, even lying to those who knew the truth.

The story was going along just fine and I was settled in with it. She picked up the phone. End of book. Yup. It was all over. So, I have to assume she went forward from there as she planned. Or did she go forward as she was behaving? Because those were two different things, of course. Humph. Not a cliffhanger, just an unsatisfactory ending. One with too many questions. Sadeqa Johnson is a new writer, so perhaps this is because she is new. Or perhaps her 10th book will be this way as well. Maybe I should go back and read her first book, Love in a Carry-on Bag, and see if this is just her style.

I was provided with this eARC by NetGalley and St. Martin's Press in exchange for an honest review. I am not being compensated in any way. All opinions are fully my own.
~ Judi E. Easley

And Then There Was Me was a thoughtful read. We meet Bea, a nurse turned housewife who struggles with bulimia. She has agreed to be a surrogate for Mena, her husband, Lonnie's cousin. Bea knows her husband Lonnie is a cheat and has put up with this for years.
This was a flawed heroine who many can relate to in many ways. I become embroiled in her journey and questioned some of Bea's choices but still, I rooted for her. At the end of And Then There Was Me, I was left with things I wondered about, but, I guess life is that way at times. I found the author's writing solid and know this read will lead to a lot of interesting discussions.

A beautiful description of the emotions that a wronged wife and mother has to go through. But a very encouraging ending. I think many women could put themselves in her place.

Nice read and easy to follow story line . Look forward to reading more from this author