67 parts Complete When a burned-out agency worker finds himself cornered by fate, he struggles to regain control of his destiny by any means: embezzlement, adultery, even dog-napping are all on the table in this quirky romantic comedy.
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Berry Ross believes the course of his life has been dictated by fate. Emotionally distanced from his fiery, French Canadian wife and his badly behaved children, he spends too much time at work enjoying vague fantasies about the wild-haired Art Director on the Agency's creative team. It feels to him that fate is meddling again when a new, no-nonsense Managing Director shows up from the Agency's UK head office with a mandate to trim the maple bacon fat.
British, brutish and beautiful, Allegra Wood-Crosbie knows two things -- how to get a bottom-line back to black and how to seduce a married man. Leaving a dark secret behind in the London office, she is dissatisfied to find herself here in the Canadian outpost. She's determined to right this ship, repair her reputation and move back home as quickly as possible. When the echo-filled loneliness of her rental apartment becomes too much to bear, she turns her attention to finding a new companion. Her sights land on Berry -- and a flatulent English Bulldog named Henry.
Back at home, Berry's wife Berenice makes a fateful decision of her own. Obsessed with home renovation projects (and imagining how her sexy co-professor might look shirtless) Berenice unwittingly kicks off a sequence of financially devastating events when she hires landscapers to dig up their Toronto backyard.
As the threads holding Berry's raft of lies begin to unravel, fate delivers its final blow, and Berry comes to appreciate the importance of personal agency.
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Readers Say:
"This book was so heartfelt, humorous, and human. The cast of characters was SOOO incredible and incredibly human."
"What a great read! Loved the humour! And the ending! Great book. Recommending it to everybody!"
"Bravo. I'm going to miss this story."
TV adaptation
