By Marian Keyes

I had lived countless lives. I had survived more loss and gain than their foolish young heads could ever imagine. I had loved and been loved; I’d been courageous and tough, tender and resourceful. I no longer had the bouncy skin they were accustomed to in their women but I aspired to be kind. I was wise and immensely capable, skilled at listening to boring stories about people’s drives to funerals and angry when I needed to be. Which was now…..

As soon as was mannerly, each person ran away from me to the nearest source of limitless alcohol, where they drank with dark desperation.

**Spoilers for Anybody Out There** I recommend that book is read before this one.

Yes, it went on a little too long and got a little repetitive, but Marian Keyes is such a good writer that I enjoyed every word. For me it’s the type of book that when Anna confides that the Michael Buble version of the song “Feeling Good” is the one she loves even though “Frank Sinatra’s dog did a better one”, I had to stop and listen to it. Buble’s, not the Dog’s.
This is a continuation of Anna’s story begun with Anybody Out there? Of course, Anna takes part in some way in all of Keyes’ Walsh family novels. Although in her own book she has a highly successful career in PR for a beauty company in New York, in the books prior to that she is portrayed as an unemployable eccentric hippie-type and a reliable source for drugs. In her first book, when her husband Aiden is killed in a car accident, she does not believe he is really dead, and tries every method she can think of to communicate with him. I really do not remember too much about it but it was very sad and traumatic, and I haven’t cared to go through all the pain with Anna by re-reading it. Maybe someday.

In this one, I loved that along with where Anna is now (48 and going through perimenopause), a lot of time is devoted to catching the reader up on Anna’s journey in the 15 or so years since Anybody Out There? ended with hope and healing. As this story begins, she has resigned from her PR job at the beauty company, and her happy 10 year relationship with Angelo has come to a friendly close. Missing her family and tired of New York, she moves back to Ireland. Shockingly, we also learn that she has had a falling out with her “ride or die” best friend, Jacqui, who was such a loyal help and support to her in her previous book.

Anna has not been able to find a suitable job in Ireland, so when Rachel’s friend Brigit needs her PR skills to save her family’s resort venture, she is glad to accept. Someone, or a group of someones from the locality are working to keep Brigit and her husband Colm’s upscale retreat from coming to fruition. They are spreading false rumors and sabotaging the ongoing construction. But when Anna arrives at their small village of Maumtully, everything goes surprisingly well. Being Anna, she makes friends with almost everyone. Plus, she is very good at her job, and soon puts the town’s skeptics’ fears at rest and smooths ruffled feathers.

Being nice is my literal job. The only reason I was hired.” “And you’re brilliant at it. Those poor men. They fell right into your trap and they still think you’re lovely.” “Yeah. Resting Eejit Face strikes again. Helen says that’s my default expression.”

Although there are still problems, a mystery, and some baddies still looming in the background, I’m glad that the danger of Brigit and Colm’s plans going bust did not take front and center. It would have been too much of a dark specter.

We get to know many of the entertaining and (mostly) likeable villagers. And it wouldn’t be a Walsh Family novel if at at some point the entire Walsh family didn’t descend upon Maumtully to support (and take advantage of) Anna. Her only problem is working with her old frenemy “Narky Joey,” with whom she has some mysterious “history.” Joey, now a successful financial broker is the liaison between Bridget and Colm’s resort and its investors, who were in danger of pulling out when the dirty tricks started. Joey has been a satellite character in at least 3 previous Walsh novels. We meet him in Rachel’s Holiday, one of the “Real Men” and Luke’s best friend. He also makes an appearance in the sequel, Again, Rachel and, of course, Anna’s first story. To say Joey has turned over a new leaf in the intervening years is putting it mildly. We know that he had a child with Anna’s best friend Jacqui. They eventually broke up and he married again to an upstanding citizen, had 3 more children with her, and divorced. He is a wonderful and loving father to all 4 of his kids. As Anna learns, he has truly become a sterling character and that old spark is turning into a new flame. But Anna is very hesitant given what her past experience with him has been.

Joey had known me during several incarnations. I was privy to information about him that almost no other person was. But our unique connection was bound up in pain. Better to park it in the past where it couldn’t hurt us....

Despite my fuzzy, and sometimes totally absent, memory, one part of Anybody Out There? has always stuck with me. In the last few pages when Aiden comes to Anna in a dream one last time, he tells her to “look for the signs” that he is watching over her. Years later, Anna still sees his signs in her hours of need. In the dream he told her that she will have a great love with a man once again. Anna asks him if he knows who, and the only thing he will tell her is that “she already knows him.” I had no idea.