I am lucky enough to be a runner up in the competition to win a copy of the above-named book.
What an enticing title for someone like me who has been married 3 times!
I had found the book to be a slow starter. It is the old familiar story of a beautiful woman marrying a widower and taking on board his family, with all the joys, trials and tribulations therein.
It does pick up the pace, but is a long way from the insistent page-turner which I personally prefer if reading a novel. The author has gone to great lengths to describe her characters, and some of the situations in which the people find themselves make for good reading, but unfortunately half-way through a gripping scene one often finds a big fat paragraph full of description, which, although beautifully written, does interrupt the flow and therefore looses the thread.
This is somewhat reminiscent of a Maeve Binchy, whose books I sadly miss. And I can't help but compare this book to hers. I no longer read novels, frankly, so perhaps I'm not the best judge of this book. At my age of 72 I tend to go more for the "how-to" titles, as I love to learn.
The author has plainly gone to enormous lengths to make the tale well-written, honing her craft, and compared to thousands of modern novelists, it is. There are parts of it which I enjoy, and I am very conscious at the same time that it is not something to which I would naturally gravitate, given the choice, if I were to be let loose in Waterstones.
Having said all that, and being very picky, I suspect that other folk will find it enchanting.
Have any of you got all electric cars? Pros and cons please.
Angela Rayner lashes out and calls Sunak “pint sized loser”.