Karen, Lizzie, Ed en Alison kennen elkaar nog niet. Maar ze hebben één ding gemeen: ze zijn gescheiden of staan op het punt dat te doen. Karen is een gelukkige single van in de vijftig en wil met haar ervaring anderen helpen door een club op te richten voor mensen die zich afvragen HOE OVERLEEF IK EEN SCHEIDING? Lizzie, redacteur bij een tijdschrift (workaholic) en moeder van twee kinderen (die ze vaak niet begrijpt) is geschokt als ze erachter komt dat haar man een affaire heeft met haar beste vriendin. Ed, einddertiger en drie keer getrouwd, wil dolgraag vader worden, maar is nog op zoek naar de perfecte vrouw. En Alison ontdekt als haar jongste kind naar de universiteit is vertrokken dat haar man haar wil verlaten om `op zoek naar zichzelf te gaan. Zo wordt het huis wel heel stil en leeg. Een missie om hun leven op orde te krijgen begint, wat tot onvermijdelijke, soms pijnlijke, maar ook grappige confrontaties in de groep leidt.
I've written six novels, including the bestselling The School Run, and The Wedding Party, which was nominated for Love Story of the Year by the Romantic Novelists Association.
This book was OK. Took me a long time to get into it and I found it hard to keep up with who the people were. It was a good book but for some reason I found it hard to get into fully so was reading it bit by bit so lost track of the plot.
Here we meet a group of people, newly single for one reason or another who have joined the 'How To Survive Divorce' club. Karen who runs the club left her husband 10 years ago, she believes that her experience can help others so she opens the club.
The other members are Lizzie, editor of Charisma magazine, her husband Tom has left her for her best friend. Alison, her youngest child has just left home, at the same time her husband David has left her and she's left quite a bit bewildered by it all. Ed, after numerous relationships which includes 3 marriages, all he wants is to find the right girl, settle down and have a family.
This book follows the trials and tribulations of their lives, how they are coping with singledom! Each chapter is devoted to a main character, I love stories told in this way rather than a conventional chapter one, chapter two etc.
Six sentences into the story I found myself belly laughing. I wasn't sure if that was a good sign or not, would the book keep the fun all the way through it or would it deflate like a balloon? I'm glad to say it did keep the fun, the writing flowed easily, making it an easy book to pick up, put down.
I really enjoyed this book, told in the third person narrative it explores every characters lives, it delves really deep and I felt I had a good understanding of how every character worked. There were plenty of other characters in this book which could have got a bit confusing but as each were related to a main character, I didn't have to stop and read back to find out who was who. King has included an introduction in the book to the four main characters and names of their children, friends. I loved all the characters but I feel that Lizzie's Mum and Dad must have a deserved mention for being fantastic, what a pair and I really enjoyed reading about their exploits!
This was good chick lit reading but with plenty of drama, every chapter ended on a cliffhanger, just like a soap opera, pretty hard to do because you have to keep that pace right through the book but King managed it. I swear at the end of each chapter I heard the opening bars of a well known tv show!
I'd highly recommend reading this book, a five star read for me.
I love this authors style of writing, and although I am not usually a chic lit type of girl, I have really taken to this author and her other books.
This book was the tale of several women and a couple of men, who's lives had been turned upside down by their partners leaving or them leaving their partners. Each character had their own story to tell and they were all very different.
Karen and her Husband had separated and she had an idea to set up a club for people to get together and chat about Divorce and separation, and help each other work through it. A club where people had someone to talk to. She soon got people to join. I loved the characters in the book and their quirky ways. It was lovely to see how they all developed throughout the book and how they managed to turn their lives around. The author manages to write the characters in such a way that you really warm to them.
At the beginning of the book there is a section called "Who's who in Divorce for Beginners". To start with I had to keep referring to this as I was getting confused as to who was who. There are a lot of characters in this book; from the persons attending the group to their friends and family members and I sometimes found myself getting confused as to who belonged to who, especially if I had put the book down for a couple of days due to having no time to read. I don't know if this is a problem with me and my memory as this has happened to me with a couple of books now. If I don't keep reading a book with lots of characters in it, I soon lose the thread of who is who. This is the only reason I dropped it a star. I had a picture of them all in my head, it's just they got jumbled as to who lived with who and who was married to who.
There is certainly enough to keep you interested in the book, and out of pure feminine nosiness, where you feel like you are intruding into their lives, you just have to keep reading to find out what happens to everyone. It's not all plain sailing but that again helped to keep your interest.
I will certainly continue to read more by this author, and look forward to her next book.
This is my first book by Sophie King and I can say that it is not the last one, for sure. Although it was not an easy read because of all the dramas, it WAS a super book with many heroes with deep characters, people who lived a lot and could share their experience. You can't for sure stay neutral to them, I was experiencing all the emotions, pain but also the happy moments. What I particularly liked about this book is the fact that it was full of twists and surprises. When I thought that something is going to happen, there happened something totally different, and so it had me always in anticipation, waiting for what's going to happen. And although the thing that happened were not exactly this what I thought is going to be, I am not at all dissapointed. This book is moving, I have fallen for the characters, I have kept my fingers crossed for them and wanted everything to end good for them. I liked them and disliked some of them very much, I couldn't stay neutral. It is about normal people, people like us who are fighting to have their ends meet, to have a proper family but learn that they must have their dignity as well. Would really reccomend this book.
Dit boek was beter dan haar vorige (De bruiloft), daarom vier sterren. Het duurde even voordat ik in het verhaal zat, maar daarna kon ik het boek maar moeilijk weg leggen. De hoofdpersonen zijn erg sympathiek en ondanks het onderwerp (scheidingen) is het een hartverwarmend boek. Net als in Sophie Kings andere boeken wisselt het perspectief steeds van de ene naar de andere hoofdpersoon. Daardoor blijft de spanning erin. Als je de andere boeken van Sophie King ook met veel plezier hebt gelezen, dan moet je deze ook zeker gaan lezen.
Eigenlijk sloeg ik die boek gisteren al dicht, maar het leek me verstandiger om het direct voor mijn reading challenge van 2016 te laten gelden. Uitgelezen, maar niet meer van dat. Het boek kon me niet meeslepen en ik had het erg moeilijk om de personages uit elkaar te houden. Neen, dit was geen hoogvlieger.
Disappointing. It jumped between characters too quickly and it was ages before it dawned on me that the extra passages were relating to the wife of Caroline's ex-lover.