Anna Walsh ostensibly has it all – an apartment in New York, a caring partner who enjoys cooking for her and a PR job in the beauty industry. This means plenty of free beauty samples, the dream of many a young woman. Yet, Anna feels unfulfilled; something seems to be missing in her life. What with the unexpected onset of early perimenopause, her hormones are all over the place.
She makes a drastic decision to trade her life of glitz and glamour and relocate to a tiny Irish town – Maumtully, population 1,271. This is the spot where her good friends Brigit and Colm are in the process of setting up a luxury retreat, wedding venue and coastal resort. They urgently need PR as the local townsfolk are disgruntled and acts of sabotage are starting to emerge.
Anna feels she is well up for the task but then an unexpected character from her past, Joey Armstrong, appears on the scene. This can potentially be a huge spanner in the works as the two of them have quite a history with unfinished business that needs to be resolved, once and for all.
The drama then unfolds at a glacial pace and I felt myself wanting to skim read and omit huge chunks of this top-heavy tale – but I bravely soldiered on, waiting for a glimmer of something. Perhaps an unexpected twist? Unfortunately, this was not to be and after wading through more than 500 pages of not very good writing, I was relieved when the saga was finally wrapped up. With a pretty bow, of course.
The author flung one character after the other at the reader – it was exhausting trying to keep count of who was who, what they actually had to do with the storyline and why they were even mentioned. Here’s a taste: Courtney, Colm, Queenie, Brigit, Ree, Ben, Hal, Karina, Aber, Ziryan, Vivian, Grainne, Teagan, Steve, Augustina Mahon, Hardware Ralph, Ferne, Rionna, the Custard Creams, Ike Blakely and a whole throng of Beardy Glarers I found it difficult to differentiate between.
Through the years I have read many, if not all of Marian Keyes’ novels – she often featured the Walsh family and we got to know the sisters very well. However, I am of the opinion that this storyline has run its course. Her writing has become formulaic and flat. It saddens me to say this, but I will not read another Keyes book – this fan is signing off. So long Marian. - Fiona de Goede
Publisher: Penguin Random House, South Africa. ISBN 978-0-241-44115-2
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