Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Really enjoyed it!, 7 April 2008
I have to agree with another reviewer here - this is Patricia's best book so far. I read it on holiday and could hardly put it down. She deals with the subject of weddings and families really well and also she depicts older female characters very well too. I felt really sorry for poor Judith who at fifty is spiteful, resentful and discontent because she feels life has passed her by while she's been taking care of her mother Lily and has no help from either of her siblings. You really understand why she is the way she is by the end of the book. I also really liked Connie, first wife and mother-of-the bride and I liked melissa, the teenage step sister of the bride for all her naivety and rebellious teenage ways. The run up to the wedding was narrated really well and I enjoyed reading about the actual day. I would give this 5 stars but because it 'is to be continued' I removed a star. How can I wait a whole year to find out what happens next??? It's so frustrating!!!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Better than ever!, 15 April 2008
Dare I say that this is Patricia Scanlan's best book to date? I think so. From page one I was drawn into the story and completely hooked. Not a dull moment. Pure joy all the way.
Not that the story itself is all bliss. Connie and Barry have been divorced for years. Barry is married again to Aimee and has 13 year old daughter Melissa in this marriage. Now Connie and Barrie's daughter Debbie is getting married and the event leads to a myriad of complications in the two families. One of them being Barry's renewed interest in his first wife, whom he left so many years ago...
Aimee is a tough, self-sentered career woman, with business trips abroad, designer clothes and no time for cosy family life.
First wife, Connie, is her opposite. A nurse, she has raised Debbie single-handedly and created a nice little home with a heavenly flower garden for the two of them. Neither money nor time has allowed for fancy clothes and pursuing a svelte body over the years. Connie appears a bit frumpyish and middle aged, and has seemingly lived in contented celibacy, until now!
There are other people and destinies to be met in this rich and fulfilling tale, which is not your regular chick lit but a wise story about life and love, regrets and new hope.
The book is excellently written and filled with humour. Always a bliss. A golden moment is young Melissa and her best friend Sarah's participation in Debbie's wedding, described with much insight and tenderness. Ah, to be 13 again, with your whole life ahead of you (and posters of Johnnie Depp over your bed...).
The book is not neatly wrapped up in a happy ending. Expertly, new threads are being woven in and create expectations for joys to come. Joys we are invited to share, the last sentence being - To be continued.
I can't wait.
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10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delivering the goods, 29 Jun 2008
One of Scanlan's greatest attributes is her determination to humanise her characters. And we're not just talking about the central heroine. The ostensible "bad guys" are presented as fully fleshed-out people too. While popular fiction is often presented/dismissed merely as 'good, clean fun' this book is the kind of proper storytelling that manages to transcend the genre.
For me, Scanlan's career high has always been "Promises, Promises." That position has now been usurped by "Forgive and Forget." These books share a certain dark realism and a real humanity that makes them more compelling. To very loosely paraphrase Lisa Stansfield, Connie Adams may not be a surgically-enhanced Jackie Collinsesque powerbabe, but she's all woman. Elsewhere, the woman we'd all hate to work with, Judith - bitterly encumbered by responsibilities - is a heartbreaking, three-dimensional soul. The bane in her life, her scared and frail mother, is also sensitively realised. There are moments in the book (I won't spoil it for you!) when you find yourself groaning "No! Don't do it" but, true to real life, the character goes ahead and does it because they are too likeably human, too realistically weak to resist.
Given the paths the protagonists have been following, I think the sequel will be just as dark and beguiling. Unlike the reviewer 'chic lit', I am pleased that there is more to come from these characters. Hurry up, Ms. Scanlan, your readers await!
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