I guess some goodreads reviewers would say I have no right to review this book and they might actually be right. I tried to listen to this on audio and simply couldn't sustain my attention.

It's a distracting time for me, true, but on the other hand my last book (The Secret History) had no trouble holding me captive. I suppose this could be a case of the contrast effect where this book is simply failing to live up to its predecessor. I may have also been primed by comparisons with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency which, from what I did manage to take in of this book, were of a similar genre. I recently learned a British word, "twee," which means almost sickeningly sweet. That's how I feel about this book and similar ones, with cutesy characters overtly designed to bring a smile to your face and tug at your heart. I guess I'm too much of a curmudgeon, but I'd rather the author's puppet strings not stare me so blatantly in the face.

I also felt, from what I did catch of this book, that there was a schizophrenic quality to it. Julia Stuart seemed to be trying for a light, dry-humored note; at the same time, the topic of a child's death and his parents' subsequent marital estrangement hardly struck me as funny. Many of the book's other situations (out-of-wedlock pregnancy; involuntary singlehood and the doomed search for love) were clicheed, and remained sadly unredeemed by new twists which might have made them interesting.

I may try this again at some point because I realize that I may not have given it a fair chance. But in the meantime, I'm giving up on it.