I didn’t love this book, which I’m actually gutted about because I was really looking forward to reading it and had high hopes - maybe that was the problem.
Unfortunately, I just could not relate to any of the characters! Iris isn’t a very nice person at all! Even though she comes good in the end, her behaviour is ridiculous! Nobody in their right mind would behave the way that she did and I just found myself really annoyed by the whole thing! The way she treated Carol was childish and at times, plain mean! Even the way she treated the old couple running the B&B… why would you not want to sit and have a cup of tea with lovely, welcoming old people?! I would love that! She just wanted to retreat to her room and moan about her tragic life. Yawn. She was also pretty out of order to her sister. When she asked to bring up her baby… I almost threw the book at the walk. Who does that?!
The coming together of characters at the end was absurd! Again, no one would ever do that!
Some of the behaviour of the characters was so cruel, so unnecessary, and there wasn’t a happy ending really for any of them. It was just a “and then life carried on, the end”. Oh but she got a cat… of course, because no sad, childless troll could ever be complete without a cat..!
What annoyed me most by the end of this book though, was the behaviour of Iris’s two “friends”. Firstly, can we just go back to the start where it was her friend, Fay, who emails Iris to tell her to go onto Instagram and check out Maddy’s page!!! So actually, it’s FAY who fuelled this whole situation! Yet by the end, Fay and their other “friend”, Cally, have all but ditched Iris because “they wouldn’t want someone who behaved like Iris did” around! These are not friends! My friends would never ditch me based on a period of socially unacceptable behaviour! They might talk to me about it and try to understand why, but not just ditch me! These are not friends, and I didn’t like the implication that because they had children and she didn’t they would phase her out. Again, not how real friends behave.
So anyway, to summarise, I found myself annoyed and frustrated by this book and the characters, and disappointed that I didn’t love it because I really wanted to. I will definitely try another Jane Fallon novel though and hope this one just wasn’t right for me.