I heart Marian Keyes. If you secretly harbor a love of "chick lit" and slightly hate yourself for it, check this book out (and her others). Marian Keyes writes intelligent "chick lit." (No, that's not an oxymoron.) I think it has to do with the fact she's Irish. The Irish can make anything cool and high brow.

Gave up half way through. Easy to read, but too long and the characters are unlikeable/irritating (as mentioned by many other readers). Realised I have no interest whatsoever in finding out what happens to them and not prepared to waste any more time on this book. I guess chick-lit is just not my thing.

Boring, not funny, the character of lily is awful.

I always like Marion Keyes books it's a nice break from most of the 'more serious' books I read. I especially like this one because it talks about writers and getting published. In my opinion Marion Keyes is in the top 3 of Chick Lit writers and everyone who likes the genre should ad her books to the list.

3.5 warm n fuzzy stars

Keyes, who is Irish, has apparently published a number of novels but she’s new to me, and this one isn’t bad. Gemma Hogan is a Dublin-based event-planner in her early thirties and she’s good at her job, though she frequently hates it because of the entitled clients she has to deal with. She had a boyfriend, Manoj, but he dumped her to go off to London to pursue his film-production career. So the heartbroken Gemma asked her best friend, Lily Wright, who had also recently moved back to London, to keep an eye on him for her. Naturally, Lily and Manoj immediately fell for each other, set up rather impoverished housekeeping, and now have a baby. And Gemma wants revenge and believes she can still get Manoj back.

Meanwhile, Gemma’s lovable, easygoing father has just walked out on her mother, who has fallen apart, and Gemma has had to move back home for what she hopes will be only a little while. She lets off steam in a series of long emails to her old girlfriend, Susan, who is now living in Seattle, describing the series of stressful but amusing situations her father’s departure has caused.

And then there’s Jojo Harvey, a statuesque redhead and ex-cop with the NYPD, who is now one of the hottest literary agents in London, with her eye on making partner. And she’s been having an intense affair with the firm’s managing partner. And one of her clients is Lily, who dealt with the psychological fallout from being lightly mugged by writing a light-hearted fantasy about a good witch who makes the world a better place.

And then Susan, who considers Gemma a very talented writer, sends off the stack of emails to Jojo in London, hoping to kick-start her friend’s literary career. And Lily, still consumed by guilt for having “stolen” Manoj from Gemma, finds out about it. Will what she did be in the new book?

It’s all an entertaining mish-mosh of painful relationships, wince-producing misunderstandings, very funny dialogue, and unbridled karma. I’m definitely going o have to check out some of Keyes’s other work.

My first book from Ms Keys

It was quite funny
Set between three different females.

They all know each other one way or another.
It’s very short and narration of the audio was good.

3 star read

Such a fun and enjoyable read.
I especially liked reading about the inner workings of the publishing industry.
The writing, the characters all of it made this book unputdownable. Despite being over 600 pages, this one was a breeze to read.

i have no patience for crappy beginnings; i didn't finish.

read #3: june 2023
literally loved this. it's so fun listening to old faves in audio format. dunno why 20 year old me had so much hated for gemma; she was my favourite of the trio this time around.

~~

Original Review: June 2015

Super funny, and such an interesting book. Found myself rooting for all the characters and wanting to keep reading constantly.

Reread April 2019 Review:

Yeah, I didn't enjoy it as much as I did in 2015 but I still loved it and it was still so much fun. I loved most of the characters (hated Gemma and her mum was kinda pathetic - could have done without her third of the story, really) and it was still funny from when I read it the first time. I'm glad I chose to reread it.

Another fab revisit

This was torture. I really wanted to like it but is was too long and too slow and too predictable. I think it might have been OK if it had been half the length but I couldn't find it in me to care about any of the characters. It took so long to get going that I put it down for a week twice because I couldnt face it. It's a pity because she's a great writer, but this was not a great book.