This was a great holiday read that had me laughing out loud reading some parts!

Stars: 3 - Witty.

"No one knows how strong they are until they have to be."

This was the first Marian Keyes book I read and also the first book she wrote, and what a quaint little (actually big - the book is over 600 pages) novel!

This book was a journey of self-love for Claire, the protagonist, after her husband leaves her for another women, just after she has given birth. There were times I was laughing out loud - Keyes's sense of humour is brilliant. Her writing was easy to read and the pages flew by.

The ending felt a bit abrupt - I am not sure how else it could have been better, but it felt a bit arbitrary, but otherwise a great story.

This book could’ve been cut down by 300 pages, most of the sentences were pure random babble that was irrelevant to the story. It made it really difficult to enjoy and read the book and I spent large part of it skimming chapters to get to the main point - wouldn’t recommend

This is chick-lit, so you can't come in thinking it will be masterfully written. That said, this was worse than most. I picked it up because it was recommended and looked like a quick read. It was even quicker than expected, because I was able to skip a huge portion of the angst at the beginning and jump directly to the climax.

The premise of the book is that Claire's husband announces his affair and their separation on the day that Claire has their baby. The break-up of her marriage leaves Claire in a state of depression where we plumb the depths of her soul for about 150 pages. The plot is thin on the ground for this portion of the book, and we mostly hear about how dreadful she feels. Fortunately, she has what must be the easiest newborn ever and apparently needs to spend little time actually caring for the baby. Events proceed predictably, and (at the risk of spoilers), she meets another man. Finally, she is forced to choose between her marriage and the other man, but (gasp!) perhaps she can't really recover either relationship.

The denouement of the book begins with chapter 24. If you get sick of the characters before you reach that point, but want to find out what happens (like I did), I recommend skimming from that point on.

Someone left this book in the lobby of my apartment building so I picked it up to read. I understand why it was abandoned. I don't understand Marian Keyes' popularity. The main character was vapid, the secondary characters one dimensional, the plot improbable and the writing mediocre. Often I would throw it across the room in frustration.

Don't bother. I think I will take it back down to the lobby and leave it where I found it.

This was my first Marian Keyes and I was a little apprehensive going in given she is the queen of chick-lit and I am not a devourer of said genre.

But, you know what? I really enjoyed living with the Walsh Family for a wee while. The characters were just so lovely and relatable - an entitled younger sibling; one that does a disappearing act. So, for a book that was simply about life, I found I connected with the characters instantly and wanted to make sure everything turned out well for Claire.

My main difficultly with this one was the pacing. It’s quite a chonky one - 500+ pages and I’m not fully convinced it needed to be. It felt very slow in areas and I think some storylines could have been cut. However, I have to say the process of getting to what I suppose is the predictable end was surprisingly unpredictable to me which I found very engaging.

I think what made me enjoy this more than other chick-lit was Keyes’ writing style. It was just so laugh-out-loud funny to be inside Claire’s brain. Usually, when a book has a review with that in it I roll my eyes but I promise I really did

2.5 stars
I struggled a bit while reading this book. Maybe it's because I had high hopes for it after loving her other book, Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married. The only thing that really held my interest was Claire's relationship with Adam. I felt bored with all the rest of the parts of the book. I'm willing though to try reading the other books in the Walsh family series.

No es que no me haya gustado. Lo que es la trama la he disfrutado muchísimo, es una historia tipo chick lit super divertida y entretenida. Peeeeeero ciertos comentarios que se repiten una y otra y otra y otra vez a lo largo de la novela es lo que le ha hecho perder puntuación.
Ejemplos (nada es spoiler de la trama):
- No tengo la cita exacta pero la protagonista tenía celos de que la gente anoréxica sea capaz de no comer porque ella no tiene ese "self-control" HELLO? WTF?
- El libro se llama Watermelon porque la protagonista, después de haber tenido un bebé, está más gorda y se pasa el libro diciendo que parece una sandía de lo "redonda" que está.
- La protagonista no se siente guapa ni se acepta a si misma hasta que adelgaza de forma NADA sana porque tiene una depresión enorme y se le quitan las ganas de comer. Luego adelgaza y ya se siente guapa y entonces puffff ya mágicamene no hay depresión
- Continuamente se refiere a la mujer con la que su marido le puso los cuerdos como "Fat cow" (vaca gorda)
- Asume que un taxista es gay y ya todo el rato se dirige a él en su mente como "el taxista gay" solo porque es bajito y no se siente atraída por él.


Y si, ya lo sé, el libro se publicó en los 90' y en esa época ese tipo de comentarios eran de lo más normal y aparecían en todos los libros, películas o series. Pero lo siento mucho, yo no voy a ignorar toda esa toxicidad solo porque el libro tenga X años.

Of course I would love this book just because of it's genre but this is definintely at the top of my list. I guess because I'm actually going through such a similar situation as the character's (minus the baby) and so it touched the heart very closely. I love Claire's humor and how this book made me feel like I wasn't the only person out there going through a rollercoaster from murderous anger to guilt to all the other millions of emotions out there. It's all perceived as normal.

Simiilar situations happen everyday and it's nice to know that it can be put into words in someone else's life and make you feel normal. Her dysfunctional family was an added bonus. And Adam. What a dream guy!!

Definitely a picker-upper and made me feel whole lots better. Definitely for the chick-lit lovers!!

[listened to the audiobook] I was 4 years old when this book was published, so I believe the hardest part was to keep reminding myself that some comments and thoughts displayed in the book are not ok, although they were common at the time. I guess the biggest issue is the different moments where the main character describes sexual harassment as a joke.
Also, they probably didn’t know the word gaslighting at the time. If they knew, some dialogues would be much shorter.

3.5 ⭐️ simple, easy, funny, not too serious. but also a good self recovery story

This felt like such a ‘mum’ book and I kinda loved that about it. It was written in ‘06 and it really has not aged well in some aspects... There’s a lot of body negativity and straight up fat shaming (which actually feels poignant in the current ‘skinny era’).

I read it because I have seen Marian Keyes in so many book stores for so many years and wanted to check her out. This is the first book in a series that follows the family so I think I will keep reading the series as a light-hearted break whenever I feel like it ☺️ I’m keen to see how her writing evolves over time and to read about the other family members in the sequels!