DissatisfiedI using my post today to wish authhor Ksenija Nikolova a happy release week for Dissatisfied. This women’s fiction novel revolves around a woman’s unhappy marriage and the secrets she uncovers while trying to repair it. Here’s the blurb:
Who is to be blamed for a woman’s unhappiness?
Margot’s unhappiness is contrary to what you might expect, considering that she lives in Paris and is married to a handsome, successful man she loves. However, as time passes, she feels more certain about her emptiness and realizes how little time her husband Arthur has for her. Finally, she decides to leave him, but then something changes. Not only does Margot not know her husband as well as she thought she did, but she also comes to see that she didn’t even know herself that deeply.
Margot’s life starts changing when she discovers countless new things about her marriage, which also reawakens old traumas.
But have these signs always been there?
Has Margot’s journey been waiting for her long before she became aware of it, and can her marriage be saved?
Margot is surprised to discover Arthur knew her much better than she ever did….
If that isn’t a nail biter…read this FREE EXCERPT from chapter one!
CHAPTER ONE
August 6, 2019
My dear Arthur,
I’m writing this letter to you while you’re fast asleep. As I stepped out of the bedroom, I saw you on the sofa downstairs. You looked so peaceful, sleeping in the living room. I envy you for being able to sleep so soundly. You look like a sinless angel, but that’s not who you are. The truth is you’re an unpredictable devil who feeds off people’s souls. You crushed me into a million pieces, now there’s nothing left of me. I tried to tell you how much you’ve hurt me, but my words mean nothing if you don’t listen. I may as well be invisible. I certainly know that I’m unimportant. I felt like I was only your shadow, but then I realized that I’m not even that. A shadow is something that is there – you can even fear it, but I’m utterly gone. I don’t exist at all.
Let me get back to the reason for this letter. I have decided to leave you, my very charming and handsome husband. I know when you read this you’ll think I’m crazy for that – the craziest woman in all of Paris. I’m not the craziest woman in all of Paris at all, I’m only the unhappiest. I’m a woman who has nothing to live for anymore. I wake up and fall asleep with my grief. I lost my identity a long time ago. It’s your fault Arthur, you who will so easily replace me when I’m gone.
When you first proposed to me I was so happy. We hadn’t known each other for long, but I was sure we belonged together. I was madly in love with you and I couldn’t wait to be your wife, but nothing turned out the way I thought it would. After I came to Paris two years ago and we started our life together as husband and wife, it seemed time stopped, turning into an unbearable hell. You work all the time and I’m always home alone. You have a whole life that doesn’t include me. What do I have? I have nothing. Silly me, once I even thought you had a mistress, but then it occurred to me that if you don’t even have time for your own wife, how would you have time for another woman? If wanting another woman was the problem I would have felt it. Maybe it would have been easier for me then, to know that you were happy with someone else, even if it wasn’t me.
Remember, I came to Paris from Roubaix because of you. I left my life there. I left my mother. I left everything because I believed our love could be a beautiful new beginning. But I don’t know anyone here. I don’t have any friends and I don’t have anyone to talk to. My days are completely empty Arthur, but it doesn’t seem you even notice. If you do, you don’t seem to care. I don’t have a job. I don’t have any hobbies. I have nothing that fulfills me. That’s why I wanted children so badly. When it didn’t happen for us, all you said was the universe was telling us it wasn’t the right time. Not true, Arthur. You just don’t want it as much as I do.
“The most important thing is that neither of us has any medical complications making it impossible to have a baby. We know we’re healthy because of the test results, and we should just relax,” you said. “You heard the doctors say we haven’t been trying that long, one year is nothing. It will happen in its own time. You’re only thirty-two years old, and I’m thirty-eight – this isn’t our end, it’s our beginning, don’t force it Margot, let it be. Learn to be happy while you’re waiting for what you want,” that’s what you said every time, and that was the beginning of our end.
We stopped communicating. We stopped touching. We turned into strangers who live under the same roof but live separate lives. We haven’t slept in the same bed for months and you seem to have found your peace on the sofa in the living room. I asked you once why you don’t sleep on the big bed in the spare bedroom and you smiled and told me that a big bed is too big for one person. That made me sad, but you didn’t seem to care. You probably don’t even know how much your words hurt me. You just don’t understand. It’s easy for you because you have a life. It’s different for me because I’m so lonely. I can’t live like this anymore.
Forgive me Arthur, but it’s too hard to go on like this. I need a full life. I’m the kind of person who loves to have new things happening all the time. I want exciting adventures. I want it all. I hate your damn job so much. I know it gives us security, but it also takes you away from me. You think my feelings are silly, right? You don’t know what it’s like for me. I told you a few weeks ago I wanted to die and you didn’t even blink an eye. That’s the thing – you don’t listen to me Arthur. You don’t really listen to me.
While you are sleeping serenely, I can’t sleep at all because of the weight of the grief. And when I do fall asleep, I can’t wake up because of the heaviness in my heart. That’s how it goes, around and around in circles. What’s the point of us being together if even one of us is miserable? I don’t feel like I’m relevant to you Arthur. Arthur, I hate you.
Yours,
Margot
P.S. Remember how you used to call me Pearl when we first fell in love with each other. You told me that I’m a hidden treasure, just like a pearl. Out of all the things you could have done with that pearl, you chose to destroy it.
Hooked in, right! Dissatisfied can be purchased at all online retailers
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ksenija Nikolova is a Macedonian fiction author. She is the author of six books, her work is translated into English, Bulgarian, and Russian. She says people inspire her, and she thinks of art as an ice breaker that pushes boundaries and changes the way they see things. The world has become very judgmental and ignorant, and Ksenija believes that writing stories that smash discrimination and stereotypes can make us better and happier. Ksenija is currently working on a new novel she is very excited about. She is writing it in English and is enjoying every step of the process.
Author links:
– Instagram
– Amazon
– Goodreads
– Bookbub
