by Jill Mansell

This was a perfectly fine romance/chick-lit novel. It was well-written and kept me interested. It just lacked that special spark. It was amusing, not funny. I liked the characters but didn’t love them. The one character I hated came straight out of the Milly Johnson bad-guy playbook. I wasn’t tortured with him for long, thank goodness. The super-nice character he was threatening saw right through him and was strong enough to dispatch him fairly quickly. Another badly behaved character was at her worst during a confrontation with our main heroine, and then she turned around within minutes. She just changed her mind, apparently. While this was easy on my stress level, it prevented a strong catharsis that is so enjoyable in my favorite novels. Another storyline resolved itself too easily as well. There’s a fine line between torturing the reader with our protagonists’ cluelessness and bad decisions and building up to a “stand up and cheer” break-through. This was a pleasant read, but a little too pleasant to make it memorable. No real lows, but no real highs either. No more Jill Mansell for a while, I guess. This was the second chance book. Never say never, though

March 5, 2020