by Carole Matthews

Despite its gooey title, this is the Carole Mathews novel I chose to read in my occasional and hopeful search for another go-to auto-buy romantic comedy/women’s fiction author to add to my never-fail usuals. (Note the blurb by one of my faves.) It was well-reviewed and highly touted, being the winner of the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s Romantic Novel of the Year Award (2021)

It started out promisingly. I do not mind a leisurely pace and it was gently amusing. The heroine, Jodie, seemed pretty likable and sympathetic. We meet her on a ferry to the Isle of Wight. She is going to stay for a while on her dear brother’s houseboat which is a gol-darned fantasy abode come true. She is looking for peace and quiet and to escape from London and some unnamed mysterious tragedy. We also learn pretty quickly that she thinks her husband is cheating on her, probably, though he denies it. But his suspected cheating is not what causes her to run away, but just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

We were both happy. We laughed at our friends whose social lives ended when they started to have families and had sleepless nights to contend with,  issues with babysitters, or the onslaught of unexpected fevers, tummy upsets, coughs, and colds. We were smugness incarnate. How I  now hate Past Us.

Uh Oh.

It’s nice to hear the gentle shush of the waves, but the caw of the gulls sounds too much like a crying child and I wish they’d be quiet.

Double Uh Oh.
So it has something to do with a child. At first, I was intrigued and interested to keep reading. But finally, especially as the book is written in first person, Jodie starts to sound coy about it. The secret tragedy is built up to the point that when, over 40% in, when she finally reveals it, it was an anti-climax. I was imagining so much worse. It exacerbated my growing disapproval and impatience with the heroine that we are meant to be rooting for. She’s a little too sorry for herself. When she finally spills the beans she does it by breaking the fourth wall with the reader.

I might as well be straight with you as I can’t go on like this. You know that I’ve lost a baby, don’t you? I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that there was more to my flight than an errant husband….

I’m sorry that I’ve been keeping it from you, but I can’t even vocalise it. I had months of people – friends, and colleagues – looking at me with pity and I couldn’t bear it any longer.
I can’t tell you anymore.

By this time, I was like, “Please don’t. You’ve said more than enough. You don’t know me and I don’t like you all that much either. Please don’t speak to me again” (She ignored my request)
I didn’t like how she was treating her husband and her best friend who were worried sick about not knowing where she was or how she was doing. Given her depressive state, they probably feared the worst. Many many calls and texts just ignored (17 in one day). I didn’t like how she just did a runner. What would it have cost her to sit down and try harder to get to the bottom of the suspected cheating and her problem with his reaction to “the tragedy.” She could have told him she was leaving and why, to leave her alone, that she needed time, etc., etc. I mean, fight fair.
No shocker, she starts crushing on the younger guy in the houseboat next door and his “abs on abs on abs”. Talk about hypocritical. He is a good man and pretty smitten with the older vulnerable woman. They finally do the deed but she neglects to tell him she is a married woman which comes as a bad shock to the poor guy who has his standards.

Plenty of other things about Jodie and her situation got my goat, but that’s enough. I won’t pile on. Everything else about the book I liked pretty well, specifically the character of Marilyn who is her housekeeper and takes Jodie in hand and helps her. She is a force of nature: exuberant, loud, colorful, and cheerful despite the tragedy she has had in her own life (which was much worse than Jodie’s.) Her malapropisms provided a steady stream of smiles. I also liked the setting and the writing was easy and well done. I even liked the way she telegraphed the “big twist” which at least created some anticipation for the big reveal. Just was not enamored with our first-person narrator/heroine, and that was a hard hurdle to jump over.