Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Touching and Thought Provoking Read, 22 April 2007
Being a fan of Rowan Coleman's books I knew this one would be great.. For any single, career minded woman out there who feels that the be all and end all is impressing your boss and completing your to do list, this really opens your eyes.. Sophie Mills really is your typical high flyer. Her life is neat and organised and her barriers towards men and emotions are well and truly up! The relationship between Sophie and the two children is gently and emotionally portrayed by Rowan's writing. If you have a similar mindset to Sophie, you can really relate to how she feels when she is told about the death of her best friend and the fact she will be looking after her two daughters. There are some touching moments between Sophie and the girls throughout the book. Chapter 18 especially made me smile and cry at the same time! The comments made by Sophie's PA are also very funny.. Then there is the tale of the missing father, very interesting! Sit back, relax and read this book.. It really is fab and will appeal to everyone.. x
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gripping page turner!, 2 Mar 2006
By A Customer
This is Rowan's 4th book, and in my opinion, probably her best. It really grabs you and draws you in, I couldn't wait to finish work and get back on the Tube to get another fix of it. The characters are completely believeable, and you really start to care about what happens to them. I laughed out loud, and had tears in my eyes, at different parts, and was sorry to finish it! This book will appeal to all, whether or not you have children or hold down an office job. If you haven't read any of Rowan's books before, this would be a good place to start, then go back and read her others.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Cats and dogs and kids... basically the same principle..., 23 Aug 2007
How you rate "The Accidental Mother" will largely depend upon how many of Rowan's books you have read before this one. Whilst I would never choose her literature as my specialised subject should I ever appear on "Mastermind", I would say that I am now quite familiar with her work, having read five of her novels in the last four months. Should this be the first book you read by this much accomplished author, no doubt you will award it five stars. If you have read two or more of Rowan's books before, however, you would be very generous to award it more than four: quite simply, once again, this story has fallen into the age-old trap of being just a little bit too predictable.
Briefly, "Sophie Mills has worked her Manolo Blahniks off to reach the top of her profession. And she is very happy with her priorities in life - her job, her neurotic cat Artemis and her passion for shoes. After all, relationships only get in the way. And as for children? She hasn't even begun to think about them yet. Until one day an unexpected visitor brings news of a strange inheritance and Sophie is suddenly, out of the blue, in sole charge of two children under the age of six. But motherhood can't be all that hard, can it? Within twenty-four hours, her barely-used Chanel No. 5 bubble bath is nearly empty, her beloved flat is reduced to a war zone, Artemis has taken up residence on top of her wardrobe, and Sophie is in despair. And all her conventional mother can suggest is "Dr Roberts' Complete Dog Training and Care Manual". Determined to rise to the challenge, Sophie soon realises that she'll need more than a business plan to cope with all this..."
Without a doubt, "The Accidental Mother" has some major plus points - which under other circumstances would have inevitably earned the book a five-star rating. On the offset, the title of the book and the blurb on the back-cover actually set the scene for the story which is to follow: or, more simply, the book does what it says it is going to do - which, to be fair, can't be said for all of Rowan's books (take, for example, "The Baby Group", which very rarely makes reference to the babies, or indeed, the group!). Like all of Rowan's books, "The Accidental Mother" had that "just-one-more-chapter-before-I-do-the-washing-up" feel to it, primarily because, in this particular instance, the leading character is so easy to identify with: quite simply, I AM Sophie Mills! Ruthlessly (though not always consciously) selfish, obsessively tidy (to the point of being anally retentive) and blase in the face of a crisis ("laughing can be classified as a coping method"), I share a lot of Sophie's vices. I take heart, however, in the fact that Rowan's books ALWAYS have a happy ending, more often than not, with the "exceptionally flawed leading lady comes good" thread to it: maybe, real life can reflect this too, with me becoming more like the Sophie we grow to love at the end of the book, rather than the Sophie we hate at the beginning.
What prevents me from giving the book a five-star rating, however, is that, once again, the story is far too predictable, the script is inconsistent and there was something that wasn't quite convincing about the children. I have already touched upon the fact that Rowan's books more often than not end positively. Whilst this leaves the reader emotionally satisfied at the end of the book, it also means that they only have to read the blurb on the back of the book to see how the story-line will progress, and somewhat inevitably end. I was also hoping that the author would move aware from her standard fare of having the leading character be torn between two men: on the one hand, there's the man who initially seems to be "the one" but ultimately fades into the background and, on the other hand, there's the man who initially seems to be totally unsuitable but turns out to be her metaphorical knight: you don't have to look too hard to see this story-line also appear in "Woman Walks into a Bar", "River Deep" or "Growing Up Twice". Look out also for the blatant inconsistencies in the story-line which the author has obviously over-looked in her eagerness to keep the dialogue flowing: page 278 has Louis standing next to the window, but in the next sentence "turning in his seat", without any real indication that he sat down. My final gripe comes with the children themselves. Whilst I wouldn't go so far as to say that the author appears to have no experience of small children (like another reviewer has), and I do have to praise Rowan for achieving a balance between the personalities of the two children (Izzy is comedic to the very extent that Bella is tragic), I still can't shake the feeling that the ages that the children are supposed to be are a little unconvincing. Right from the moment I was introduced to the children, I believed that Izzy was characterised as being too IMMATURE to be a three-year-old and Bella was characterised as being too MATURE to be a six-year-old: then again, from a practical point of view, if Izzy was any younger, she probably wouldn't be able to talk, and it's difficult to know how such a parental loss would affect a six-year-old. Overall, a successful piece of writing - just don't expect too many twists in the story-line!
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