"The Painted Veil" by W. Somerset Maugham

Loved this book! I will have to see the film to see if it lives up to the book, but gosh, I really need to quit reading all of these love stories.

Anyways, the book ( set in the 1920s in London) is about a woman who is absolutely gorgeous and has her choice of suitors, waits too long and ends up settling at the age of 25 for someone who is rather plain and ordinary. He soon takes a job in Hong Kong, where she will take a lover.

When the husband discovers that she is having an affair, he gives her a choice to run off with her lover (knowing that her lover is married and would never divorce his own wife) or to join him on a trip to a Cholera-infected mainland of China. She tries to talk her lover into taking her, but he lets her down - and she sees him for the rat he always was.

She soon joins her husband on the trip, believing that he wants her to get Cholera and die for her atrocities. What unfolds is true love, albeit a little too late.

I would recommend reading it - it's a quickie!