i particularly liked this one in the series, as i could identify with anna.

it was a great story, very realistic and believable and of course i simply love the writer's writing style.

When I first got out of college I loved Marian Keyes books. The young, Irish characters living in Manhattan, usually in glamorous lifestyles. I’d had this book on my Amazon wishlist for years, probably since it was first published and I finally got around to reading it. I found it long and I couldn’t relate to the character near as much as I once would have. 20 years ago I would’ve loved this book but now I find the genre of chic lit to be broader and more realistic.

Alkuun vaikutti hieman tylsähköltä mutta kun kirjailija pääsi vauhtiin Keyesille tyypillinen kirjoitustyyli löytyi. Kirja oli hauska ja koskettavakin ja lopulta pidin siitä vaikka alkuun tuntuikin ettei ole ihan parasta Keyesiä mitä olen lukenut ja siitä johtuen vain neljä tähteä. Onneksi muuttui parempaan suuntaan. Siitä mielenkiintoisia nämä Walshin perheeseen liittyvät kirjat ovat että jaksoi jokaisesta tytöstä lukea oman kirjansa ja jostain syystä olisin myös tykännyt lukea äidin ja isän tarinan. Se olisi ollut varmasti hauskaa luettavaa - mitä luurankoja heidän kaapeistaan olisikaan löytynyt. Se oli myös hyvää että jokainen tarina oli toisestaan erilainen mutta kuitenkin tyyliltään samanlaisia.

I enjoyed this book as I do with most of Marian Keyes' books. I agree though with my daughter Samantha, who read this book first and said she enjoyed it, but the story was a bit depressing. (Even Marian Keyes agreed!) I felt I knew the characters fairly well as they have been in a few of the books I have read by the same author. The family is quite big and lots of different things are going on all the time.

After reading this book I decided that I will probably never loan it out because I will want to read it over and over again.

This is, by far, the most emotionally provocative book I've ever read. For about the first 25 chapters or so, I was convinced I knew what was going on, only to be hurled into an entire weekend of crying and page-turning. I couldn't stop crying, yet I couldn't put it down.

This book made me realize so many things about myself, life, death, and what it really and truly means to love someone so completely that you would be nothing without them.

Now, I plan to read all of Marian Keyes' other books. She is an amazingly gifted writer and I can't wait to learn more about the Walsh sisters and the many other characters she's created.

I think I'm calling it, this is my favourite of the Walsh sister stories.

(still one left to read, but Helen is my least fave sister (no one says "warcrime" that many times. No one.) so her story is going to have to be amazing to top Anna's).

No había leído nada de Marian Keyes y debo decir que empezar en una lectura conjunta ha sido una muy buena idea. De hecho, eso ha sido lo mejor del libro, sin duda: ir comentándolo poquito a poco.
Ahora bien, no quiero ponerme sentimental. Vamos con las impresiones. Así para empezar, decir (escribir) que me he reído más de una vez. Sí, sí, la amiga Keyes tiene un humor que va de lo absurdo a lo ácido y, joder, es la leche.
Mi principal problema tiene nombre y apellidos: Anna Walsh. ¡Sorpresa, sorpresa; el problema es con la maldita protagonista! Qué jodido es eso de que la protagonista caiga gorda, ¿eh? Porque sí, más de una vez le hubiera sacudido un guantazo de estos que te quedas como Dios. Vale, ya paro. Bromas a parte, la chica a ratos era un poquito gilipollas. Y digo un poquito porque, la verdad, tiene un par de salidas de tiesto que no me han parecido ni medio normales.
Mis favoritos han sido los secundarios. Los correos de Helen y la madre de las chicas me han flipado; ya no hablemos de lo cuquis que me parecen Rachel y Luke o las risas que me echado a costa de Jacqui y Joey-Morritos.
La historia está bien. Tal vez es demasiado larga para lo que realmente cuenta, pero está bien. Sin duda, el final es de lo mejorcito del libro y, si bien es cierto que no ha sido precisamente la lectura del año, no me arrepiento, para nada, de haber leído la historia de Anna.

¿Pasa algo si empezáis la saga por la cuarta parte? Pasar, no pasa nada. El problema es que sabréis qué es de Clarie, Maggie y Rachel, protagonistas anteriores. Personalmente, os recomiendo empezar en orden. La casa no se empieza por el tejado, ¿cierto? En cualquier caso, prontito tengo pensado hincarle el diente a la historia de Claire.

The grief here is intense, and really very sad, with a subdued 'happy' ending.

I will say that the 'twist' was very very evident to me from the beginning so the sorrow never felt like a punch, more like a general hollowness.

A book that’s like lying under a big duvet.

This wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be, but it was not the kind of book I would ever have picked up on my own. This is because it is pretty bad. It's not that I dislike chicklit as a genre so much as that it is not a genre I will forgive occasional badness in so long as it presses my buttons, and this was just all sloppy writing and uninteresting characters. Characters is kinda overstating it; they were more names plus associated collections of tics.

But as I said, it was not as bad as I thought it would be. I liked the descriptions of the main character's wacky outfits.

This book has a surprisingly perky cover for a book about death.

This was the third (out of four) in my March Marian Keyes book binge, and my least favourite of the four. Anna, the fourth Walsh sister, was an appealing protagonist, but the novel was an odd combination of parts. It was a love story told in flashbacks, and a loss story taking place in the present. There was a mostly realistic response to grief made up of numbness, depression, avoidance and magical thinking - the last of these represented in Anna’s attempts to connect with her dead husband through various types of psychic mediums. (Aside: I wonder how common this is?) The love and loss story is just part of the novel, though, because amidst all of this emotional drama and upheaval Anna is also trying to keep her job in cosmetic merchandising PR. There is a WHOLE lot of detail about the world of branding and selling cosmetics in New York City and I really did have minimal interest in that part of the story. Unfortunately, it is quite a large part of the story.

I think that this is probably one of Keyes’s funnier novels, but I use the word ‘think” because I could somehow register that she was being clever and funny without actually finding it very funny. It made for an odd tone, I thought, but maybe that was just me.

Anyway, I liked this story enough to proceed to Anna’s sequel, set 20 years later, and I enjoyed that one far more - so overall I would still rate this as a worthwhile read. I suspect it might appeal more to a younger reader. I’ve now read enough of Keyes’s work to realise that her characters (and their interests and concerns) have aged along with her. Perhaps she’s just getting better as a novelist, but I suspect that I’ve enjoyed the later novels more because I can relate more to them.

Anybody Out There was a book that started out really great. However, after a while, not only did it start to drag on, it also started to resemble a mess...a mildly intriguing mess, but a mess none the less. Now, I don't need much from a chick-lit to be happy, but in Anybody Out There, I just needed more.

The Good: Part 1. Part 1 of Anybody Out There was the best out of the three parts in this book. The family dynamics, which was my favorite part of Anybody Out There, were more prominent in the first part and were only alluded to in the last two parts. Another good thing was the twist. I definitely did not see that coming, particularly because I thought this was going to be a breezy, easy, funny chick-lit. Definite points for the twist.

The Okay: Part 3. Part 3, where everything was coming together, was not as good as Part 1, but way better than Part 2. Jacqui's side plot was funny enough that it kept me interested in Anybody Out There. As unplausible as it was, I was also mildly satisfied with the ending. Although, that could have been because I just wanted the book to be over.

The Bad: Part 2. I don't know how something involving mediums could've been so flippin' boring. Part 2 just dragged on and on. Oh, and Helen's emails...also dragged on and on. I found Helen to be funny and interesting at first, but after those emails, I was so incredibly bored with her character. That side plot was just pointless. Another bad thing about Anybody Out There was the numerous side plots. You had the mediums, you had the husband turmoil, the job turmoil, the ex-girlfriend turmoil, and a couple more turmoils that I don't feel like elaborating on. This book just had way too much going on. Oh, and it also stopped being funny at one point.

So, overall, I found Anybody Out There to be a dud. No laugh out loud moments, but a couple of chuckles at first. Then, there were no chuckles...no type of laughter. There was major eye-rolling, though. Utterly forgettable and more than a little boring, so I say skip it.