The Space Between Us by Anna McPartlin

If you knew you d leave this world so soon, would you do it all differently? Tick, tock . . . Workaholic Eve Hayes is burnt out and lonely. At the age of thirty-eight, she’s afraid she has allowed the chance of a real and worthwhile life pass her by. Lilly Donovan got married too young and over the years she’s become a prisoner and slave in her own home. Eve survives a horrific car accident only to be reunited with her old friend, Lily. A long time ago these two women were inseparable but the events of one terrible night ended their friendship abruptly. Now, eighteen years later, they have a chance to confront the past and reclaim their friendship. But Eve’s brother Clooney is Lily’s old flame and his presence threatens her already difficult home life. And Lily’s husband, the looming omnipresent Dr Declan Donovan can only be kept in the dark for so long . . . All the while something is whispering into Eve’s ear . . . tick, tock . . .

Anna McPartlin is an author that has shot up my radar since I read Pack Up The Moon at the beginning of last year. It was a marvellous novel, full of warmth, humour and heart and it really did blow me away. I then picked up her most latest release The One I Love (also published as Alexandra, Gone in the US and So What If I’m Broken in Ireland) and, again, it was a brilliant, brilliant read. I mean, McPartlin is just a genius storyteller. She is, without doubt, one of the best Irish writers around and her talent should not go undiscovered. I was inexplicably pleased when a new book The Space Between Us was announced and I couldn’t wait to read it, hoping for a read just as good as the previous two I’ve read.

The Space Between Us is a novel of friendships. Of how your life can turn out to not be as perfect as you thought it would be. Of how you can become stuck in a rut and not even notice. Of how one massive accident can change the course of your life and perhaps make it better than it was. Eve and Lily grew up as best friends. They did everything together and when Lily had to go and live with her Uncle to earn money before going off to College, the two girls kept in touch with letters; they were as close as sisters and Eve’s family treated Lily like their own. Fast forward eighteen years, and an incident from that summer Lily was away destroyed the friendship and Lily and Eve no longer speak. Lily’s married to Declan, has two kids, and loves her job as a nurse and Eve is a rich, jewellery designer who, after her Dad dies, decides to come back to Ireland to start over, to retire… Until a car accident brings Lily and Eve back into each other’s lives and they both begin to question how their lives turned out the way they did…

Each chapter of The Space Between Us starts with a letter – from Eve to Lily or from Lily to Eve, that takes place during the fateful summer it all went wrong for the girls, when they ended up not speaking again before it comes back to the present day. I found the letters fascinating. In fact, I would have happily read a novel filled with letters back and forth between the teenage Eve and teenage Lily as they were hugely absorbing. It set the tone for each chapter, it was a nice way to lead into it and it also fulfilled the quest of telling us exactly what happened that summer, slowly but surely. The plot itself was also hugely readable. I like books about friendships. They’re very rare, mainly focusing on romance or finding love, so a novel about two friends is sometimes a nice relief. (Not that there’s anything wrong with an excellent love story, of course.) I liked that despite so many years apart, Lily and Eve were able to fall back into the same easy friendship as Lily tended to Eve after her accident. I liked how the tragic accident made them question their lives and re-examine everything. It was hugely absorbing.

Eve and Lily aren’t exactly people you would suspect would be friends, Eve being forthright and honest, whereas Lily mainly wants to please people and look after people and want people to need her. But the love they have for each other (not in a lesbian way!) is something and their friendship just so easily rolls back the years. I found both characters fascinating. They are very different people, but they’re both so likeable. They’re both so lovely. I loved Lily, I really did. I respected how she’d put her life on hold for her husband Declan and kids, even if Declan was a bit of a horror. But I also liked Eve’s forthrightness. How she called a spade, a spade. How she wasn’t afraid to go for what she wants. The book is mainly about Eve and Lily, as it should be, I feel, but there was a very welcome cast around them who added to the story – Eve’s brother, Clooney; the aforementioned Declan, along with Lily’s kids Scott and Daisy; friends of Eve and Lily: Gina, Gar, Paul.

The Space Between Us is very well written and I found myself easily caught up in the story. I wanted Eve to get better, I wanted Lily to have everything she ever wanted… The ending was quite poignant. I sensed what was coming, I sensed we hadn’t been told everything, and it made me kind of sad, but it also made me hopeful. Anna McPartlin can do that. She can make you feel despair and sadness but she can also make you see the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s quite an impressive feat. If you haven’t already tried Anna McPartlin then you are definitely missing out. She is one of the finest writers around and I’m 3-for-3 of her 5 novels. The Space Between Us is one of the best tales of friendship and I really, really enjoyed it. I definitely recommend the book and I recommend McPartlin as an author. She’s a true storyteller and this novel confirms it for me.

1. Can you describe Results Not Typical for us in 5 words?

Um, no… Can I do six? The Devil Wears Prada meets WeightWatchers. Sort of.

(Okay, so that’s eight. Flummoxed by the first question!)

2. Results Not Typical isn’t your typical Chick Lit novel, but is that where you would categorise it if you had to? Are you OK for people to say it’s Chick Lit?

It definitely isn’t your typical chick-lit, but that’s part of the reason why I wrote it. There’s numerous books out there that ridicule or exaggerate corporate life (Company by Max Barry being my favourite) but they all seemed to be aimed at men and about men, for the most part. I wanted to read a book like that about women, for women, and when it came to an industry ripe for ridicule, there was no better candidate than a dieting and weight loss company.

I would – and do – call it chick-lit, because to me “chick-lit” means commercial fiction for women, and that’s what Results is. I think the problem as highlighted of late is that the genre is expected to encapsulate so many different kinds of books – everything from the likes of My Sister’s Keeper to the Shopaholic series – that some authors are bound to get offended and some readers confused. And there’s definitely a double standard, with One Day being a shining example – if that had had a woman’s name on the cover, it would’ve been labelled chick-lit without a doubt. But it didn’t, and so it wasn’t. It’s the double standard that annoys me, not the “chick-lit” label itself.

3. Where did the idea come from for Results Not Typical? It isn’t your average boy-meets-girl affair, and and I’d love to know the inspiration behind the book!

The inspiration came from, fortunately or unfortunately, personal experience! In the latest instalment of my decade-long career in yo-yo dieting, I joined a crazy behaviour modification clinic who forced me onto a diet of not-completely-dissolved protein flakes and profoundly messed with my head for one hour a week in person and about seven hours a week via hypnosis CDs, which never hypnotised me because I was too busy giggling at them. When I’d tell my friends what had happened at my latest clinic visit, they’d fall about the place laughing – and they couldn’t believe that that sort of thing was even allowed to go on. Eventually two wires connected in my brain – the hilarity of the clinic’s practices and the fact that I wanted to write a book like Company, but for and about women – and the idea for Results Not Typical was born. Something had to actually happen in the book, so I had the only existing stock of their soon-to-be-released revolutionary weight-loss pill, Lipid Loser, stolen from their corporate headquarters in the opening.

4. You’ve spoken vocally on your blog about how you’ve tried to be published “traditionally”, does it annoy you somewhat that your book is rejected because it isn’t “typical” Chick Lit? Shouldn’t that not matter? Shouldn’t we be embracing books that are a bit different to the norm? [Ed note: For the record, I think we should be be embracing different books; it's refreshing to read something different, something not typical.]

I think as a reader it’s easy to get all romantic and idealistic about what books should or shouldn’t be on the shelves, but publishing is a business above all else. For every five celebrity novels, there’s one The Help (which I heard was rejected 50 times before getting an offer!), which is a shame, yes, but the sales of the celebrity novels enable publishers to release books like The Help, because even if the “risk” book doesn’t do well, the “safe bet” books will still pay the wages. This lets them take a chance on something new, something unusual, but they can’t take a chance on all the somethings new and unusual, because their business would implode. So when I was told that Results wasn’t mainstream enough or enough like what was doing well at the moment, no, I wasn’t annoyed really. I was just happy they had some positive feedback to go with the rejection.

I did get one rejection that annoyed me, and it was an editor who said, “I like it, but it would only appeal to women who’ve been on diets.” I don’t think that’s true but even if it was, isn’t that an awful lot of women? I felt like saying, um, YEAH?! That’s the point!

5. Why did you eventually decide to self-publish it? Did you just reach the point where you figured that since self-publishing is doing brilliantly at the moment, you might as well get your book out there rather than carry on being rejected?

I felt like since I was getting pretty much the same rejection everywhere I went, I was only ever going to get rejected with this book. Getting traditionally published is my real goal, and more than one publisher said they’d like to see something else, so I wanted to turn my attention to doing that, to thinking about what that something else might be. But here I had this novel, finished and ready to go, that several editors had said great things about and which I really believed could have an audience, and I already had an audience – my blog readers, Twitter followers and the people who’d read my previous self-published non-fiction books. Since my financial investment is much, much smaller than a publishing house’s would be, Results Not Typical wasn’t such a big risk for me. If it sold well that would mean more money for coffee, and more coffee would mean that I might actually manage to write the Something Else – not to mention the fact that being able to say, “I’ve sold 10k copies of my self-published novel” might get me over the finish line with an editor when the Something Else is finished and ready to go. Of course whether or not I’ll be able to say that remains to be seen.

6. For anyone wanting to self-publish their book, what would your recommendations be? (Apart from reading your book Self-Printed, of course!) Do you recommend having it professionally edited and having a professional cover designed? Did you have it edited properly and designed properly?

There is absolutely no justification for self-publishing without having your book at least proofread, preferably copyedited and proofread and ideally structurally edited, copyedited and proofread. But if after all that you don’t get a professional cover design, you might as well just tear up your polished manuscript and chuck it down a toilet, because you are doing yourself such a disservice. And yes, I did all that to Results – I wouldn’t dare say that if I hadn’t!

As for my recommendations, I think too many would-be self-publishers start off their self-publishing journey by studying other self-publishers. I think this is a mistake. You know the phrase, “Shoot for the moon – even if you fail, you’ll land among the stars”? Well, if you shoot for the stars and fail, you’ll end up in the treetops. My point is you’re far better off studying the world’s bestselling authors, who are all traditionally published and have professional marketing teams, etc. and try to emulate or even improve on what they do, rather than trying to emulate the success of your fellow self-publishers. Go to self-publishers for the nuts and bolts (like how, specifically, to produce a self-published book) but go to the world’s biggest selling authors for inspiration on how to sell them.

Oh, and buy Self-Printed of course!

7. How do you make yourself stand out when anybody can go onto Amazon, upload their book and make up a cover and stick on a cheap price? How do you let people know that your book isn’t just some cheap novel filled with errors that’s there to make money and quickly, and that it’s worth people picking up? Is it just trial and error?

I’m still trying to figure all that out, to be honest. I think there are certainly things you can do to make yourself stand out from the masses of cheap and perhaps not very good books, self-published or otherwise. Your cover sends a slew of messages about the quality of your book in an instant, which is why it’s so important to have the best one you can. Then there’s having a good product description on Amazon – a blurb that reads like it was written by a professional, and endorsements that aren’t from your mum. (Self-publishers showcasing inappropriate and/or irrelevant endorsements is a pet peeve of mine – the point is not what the person said about your book, people, it’s all about the person who said it!!!) Finally, getting good but honest reviews, both from Amazon customers and book review sites – like yourselves! – is a great way to set your book apart. Once you get all that sorted, all you can really do is find a comfortable seat and settle in to wait for some luck.

8. Do you still hope to be published traditionally some day, or are you happy to stick with the self-publishing revolution and stay on the dark side?

I want to be traditionally published. That’s my “real” writing dream. It’s not about money or validation or being accepted or being told I’m good enough or gaining access to “the club” or any of the other ridiculous reasons the Self-Publishing Evangelists (i.e. the ones who insist on calling all agents and publishers “gatekeepers”) try to persuade me it’s “really” about. Getting published is my dream, it’s always been my dream and self-publishing, no matter how successful it is, will never be enough to replace achieving that dream. That’s what it’s about. What’s changed is that I used to think self-publishing was just a little adventure on the side, whereas now I see it as a parallel. Or at least, I hope it’ll get to be a parallel. I’m just waiting for my Fairy Editor-Mother to arrive with a dotted line and a pen…

9. Are you currently working on a second novel? Or, rather, will you be self-publishing a second novel?

The novel I’m working on now is the one I’m going to submit to publishers so hopefully I won’t ever self-publish it. (Cross your fingers for me!) But if Results sells well and people like it, I do have two more novels in a similar vein planned, which I will self-publish. I’m not one of these crank ‘em out self-publishers though, especially not with novels – you’ll have to wait a while for them. And if anything happens with the Please Publish Me Novel (!), that would be my priority, of course.

10. How has blogging helped your author profile? Do you feel you sell more books because you blog?

I think I only sell books because I blog, at least when you trace it all back to the beginning. What I’ve come to believe is that books – or my books, anyway – sell mainly because people find them on the Amazon Kindle store. They find them because Amazon churns them up in things like recommendations and “Customers Also Bought…” To get into these things, you have to have some initial sales that came from elsewhere, and for me those initial sales come from the people who read my blog, follow my tweets, etc. I wouldn’t be where I am today, career-wise, if it wasn’t for blogging. I personally think starting a good blog is the single best thing you can to jump-start your career as writer – besides writing a sure fire bestseller, of course.

11. Your blog is pretty much a one-stop-shop for anyone who needs help trying to self-publish, did you have the same help when it came to self-publishing your first self-published book Mousetrapped or is it because you didn’t have that knowledge that you’re helping others by telling us all about the trial and error (and, ultimately, reward) or self-publishing?

I really had no help. Google is what got me through self-publishing, and since I felt I couldn’t trust most of the information out there (which seemed to be written exclusively by people who wanted to march into publishing houses with pitch forks and torches – bitter, much?) I had to figure out a lot of it just by doing, and course-correcting if I made a mistake. That’s why I started blogging about self-publishing in the first place – because it was so hard to find non-crazy information on the subject. Lots of people are doing it now but it was still a bit of a novelty back then.

12. Without getting into details – I know you’ve posted money stats on your blog, but that’s not what I want – do you make enough from your four self-published books to make a living? Is that your aim if you don’t currently, to make enough each month, each year?

Let’s put it this way: right now, I write full-time but I live with my very understanding parents. (I’m 29!) If sales of my newest books follow the same trajectory as Mousetrapped did/does though, in a few months’ time I’ll be making more from this than I did working a 9-5. But that’ll be after nearly two years of spending about ten hours a day doing something to do with self-publishing. It’s taken a lot of time and work to get to this point.

13. As well as self-publishing your debut novel, you’ve also self-published three non-fiction books, Mousetrapped, Backpacked and Self-Printed, can you tell is a bit about each of them and why we should read them? [Ed note: Or rather why everyone else should read them, since I've read both Mousetrapped and Backpacked - I highly recommend them, too!]

Mousetrapped is about the year and a half I spent living in Orlando, Florida and working in a hotel in Walt Disney World, but it’s really about the place where adolescent dreams meet grown-up reality, and what happens when the two clash a few thousand miles from home. Backpacked is about the backpacking trip through Central America I took immediately after leaving Florida, even though I hate roughing it in hostels, cockroaches, activities, spending all my time with other people and basically everything backpacking is about. You should read them because I always need more coffee.

Self-Printed: The Sane Person’s Guide to Self-Publishing is everything you need to know to self-publish an e-book and a print-on-demand paperback without ever saying “gatekeepers” or thinking that all bookshops in the world will be closed by the end of next week. You should buy that because it’s useful and funny (occasionally), and because it also helps with the coffee cause.

14. Finally, if there was one piece of advice you wish you had when you first self-published Mousetrapped, what piece of advice would that be that you would give to anyone wanting to self-publish?

I would say: pick a side of the fence and then stay on it. What I mean by that is if you’re self-publishing e-books and POD paperbacks which are sold on sites like Amazon.com, then don’t bother having a bookstore launch or getting newspaper coverage, which is useless unless your book is actually for sale in stores. If you want that, then don’t self-publish e-books and POD paperbacks. And also, go for it! Done right, it can be fun, it can be profitable and it can bring your published writer dreams just a little bit closer.

Thanks so much, Catherine!

The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks

They were teenage sweethearts from opposite sides of the tracks – with a passion that would change their lives for ever. But life would force them apart. Years later, the lines they had drawn between past and present are about to slip …Called back to their hometown for the funeral of the mentor who once gave them shelter when they needed it most, they are faced with each other once again, and forced to confront the paths they chose. Can true love ever rewrite the past? The new epic love story from the multi-million-copy bestselling author of The Notebook and The Last Song. Nicholas Sparks is one of the world’s most beloved authors.

Nicholas Sparks is an author everybody has heard of – how can you have not heard of Nicholas Sparks? He’s written 16 novels of all shapes and sizes but what mostly boil down to being epic love stories and most of his novels have either a) already been made into films or b) are currently in production to be a film. I mean, he must be the most prolific book-to-movie author out there. Every book he writes seems to be snapped up to be made into a movie and the turnaround is quite something. I have some of Nicholas’s books on my shelf but only had my first taste of his work when I read Safe Haven earlier this year. I loved it, and I wondered why I hadn’t tried Nicholas sooner. So I was thrilled to get a copy of his new novel The Best of Me and settled down to read it ASAP.

The Best of Me is a very different read to Safe Haven; something tells me that’s true of all of Nicholas’s novels. Despite all having a central theme of love, all of his book plots seem to be wildly different. It’s impressive, actually, because most authors stick to a general formula for their books, but Nicholas doesn’t and his plots range far and wide. The synopsis for The Best of Me doesn’t give much away, as you can see above but it does rather sum the book up nicely as both Dawson and Amanda find themselves back in Oriental, their home town, after Tuck, a man they both knew well dies. Dawson and Amanda had been teenage sweethearts, torn apart because their lives were so far apart from each other and when they see each other again, it begs the question of just how deep their love really ran for each other way back when…

The Best of Me is only 292 pages long, which surprised me. That’s not particularly long, and I was surprised to see how small it was when I got it. However, there’s a lot packed into the novel and it’s a really good read. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I enjoyed Safe Haven, but it was a solid 4 star read for me. I’m a total sucker for love that’s star-crossed, for love that attracts opposition, so I was sucked in by Dawson and Amanda’s love and by the way they didn’t let their contrasting backgrounds come between them during that summer they spent together. I liked how the intervening years didn’t change their feelings for each other, too, once they both came back to Oriental. I thought the entire novel was just so magical as Dawson and Amanda are reunited and they reconnect over the death of their friend.

I thought the interconnecting stories were also interesting – Dawson’s cousins, Abee and Ted who were unhappy their cousin was back at Oriental, wanting to get back at him; Amanda’s family, including her alcoholic husband Frank; the Bonner family, who are connected to Dawson; and the life story of the dead man, Tuck and his wife Clara. I found the way all the stories connected and were told were excellent and it really heightened my reading of the novel. I knew what was happening/going to happen with certain characters and it was interesting to watch it all play out while the characters were waiting to do what they were going to do. It was a very interesting novel, and I was particularly fascinated by Tuck’s story. I loved how he had a hand in the novel despite the fact he died before we got to really know him.

The ending was a massive shock for me. As the book neared its end, I pretty much knew I wasn’t going to get an ending that was going to please me. Despite the fact I knew how it was going to end pretty much as soon as I got to about 20 pages out, I truly wanted to stop reading so I didn’t have to read it. It was a very bittersweet read and Nicholas Sparks knows how to keep you turning the pages – even when you don’t really want to. The Best of Me was a very readable read, and one I liked reading. I liked the whole love on from the opposite side of the tracks, the tragedy of it all, and I couldn’t help wondering just how different Dawson and Amanda’s lives would have been had they stayed together as teenagers. (It certainly would have been a very different book…) I’d definitely recommend the book, I enjoyed reading it and I can definitely see this one becoming a movie, too. I can’t wait to go back and read Sparks’ backlog of books he’s definitely an author I enjoy reading and The Best of Me was hugely enjoyable.

They were teenage sweethearts from opposite sides of the tracks – with a passion that would change their lives for ever. But life would force them apart. Years later, the lines they had drawn between past and present are about to slip …Called back to their hometown for the funeral of the mentor who once gave them shelter when they needed it most, they are faced with each other once again, and forced to confront the paths they chose. Can true love ever rewrite the past? The new epic love story from the multi-million-copy bestselling author of The Notebook and The Last Song. Nicholas Sparks is one of the world’s most beloved authors.

The First Day of the Rest of my Life by Cathy Lamb

In this deeply moving and wonderfully insightful novel, acclaimed author Cathy Lamb explores what can happen when one woman decides to reclaim her past—and her future—no matter where they lead. . . Madeline O’Shea tells people what to do with their lives. A renowned life coach, she inspires thousands of women through her thriving practice—exuding enviable confidence along with her stylish suits and sleek hair. But her confidence, just like her fashionable demeanor, is all a front. For decades, Madeline has lived in fear of her traumatic past becoming public. Now a reporter is reinvestigating the notorious crime that put Madeline’s mother behind bars, threatening to destroy her elaborate façade. Only Madeline’s sister, Annie, and their frail grandparents know about her childhood—but lately Madeline has reason to wonder if her grandparents also have a history they’ve been keeping from her. As the demons of the past swirl around her, a tough, handsome judge with a gentle heart is urging Madeline to have faith in him—and in herself. And as she allows her resistance to thaw, the pain she expects pales in comparison to the surprises headed straight to her door. With one bold, unprecedented move, Madeline O’Shea may just wake up out of the sadness and guilt that have kept her sleepwalking through life for so long—and discover that the worst thing that can happen is sometimes the very thing we desperately need. The First Day of the Rest of My Life is an eloquent and triumphant tale of a fierce act of love, a family’s legacy, and one woman’s awakening to her own power—with no secrets.. . ..

Cathy Lamb isn’t an author I know particularly well, however when I saw the cover for her latest book I rather fell in love. I thought the girl looking out over the water was very atmospheric so I decided to look into it a bit more and I thought the synopsis sounded very intriguing. I then took a peek at the beginning pages of the novel (which, by the way, is the best invention ever; I can always tell from the first few pages if a book appeals or not) and after enjoying the opening of The First Day of the Rest of My Life, I decided to buy it for myself. It’s a bit of a strange looking book. It’s not a true paperback, but nor is it really a hardback and the pages are “deckle edged” which basically means they’re uneven and it looks as if it was cut wrong – it isn’t unique, it’s annoying. However book problems aside, I dove into the novel, hoping it would live up to its beautiful cover.

The First Day of the Rest of my Life surprised me. The synopsis isn’t necessarily right. Yes, Madeline is a life coach, yes she had a very rocky childhood (to put it mildly) but I don’t remember any kind of “tough, handsome judge with a gentle heart” that “urges Madeline to have faith in him”. That’s false. There is no man like that. There is a man. But he’s vague for most of the novel, at best. Synopsis aside, I found the book fascinating. It’s not a happy book at all, in fact it’s one of the hardest books I think I’ve ever read, particularly in parts, and what happened to Madeline, and her sister Annie, is not the kind of thing you usually see in a Chick Lit/Women’s Fiction novel. I found the plot just to be so fascinating and I felt Lamb had the right tone for the novel, with regular flashbacks to the past, as we find out exactly what happened to Madeline – and her entire family – in years gone by.

My favourite part of the novel was definitely the plot line involving Madeline’s grandparents. Her grandma has dementia, which is one of the worst diseases in the world, and Lamb handles it so sensitively, but she also doesn’t shy away from letting us see Madeline’s grandma at her worst, at her most confused. I don’t mean to demean what happened to Madeline and Annie by saying I preferred their grandparents plot, I just felt that it was handled so, so well that my interest was hugely piqued. Madeline’s grandma and grandad’s backstory is massively important – in fact, it’s as if the whole novel is built on an intricate web of lies – and the pace with which we find out the truth is just right. A little bit here, a little bit there, and it is heartbreaking. I won’t say what it is, because it’s immense and worth figuring out yourself, but believe me when I say it will tug at your heart-strings.

I found the characters to be extremely fascinating. I liked the fact that Madeline was a life-coach. It was sort of serendipitous how she’d come to tell people how to live their life despite not having control over hers. I’m a firm believer that just because your life is in disarray it doesn’t mean you can help others. I found Madeline to be so likeable. Both her and Annie could have imploded multiple times during the book. There are so many secrets, so many things they have to keep bottled up, that I’m surprised both were as sane as they were. What I liked best, though, was the way Madeline and Annie had never let what happen to them come between them, how they stayed close despite everything. That’s a true sisterly bond, that is. I also liked their grandparents. I did, I did. My favourite character, though, was Marie Elise, the girls’ mother. She’s passed away during the novel’s present, but she’s integral to the book and she just seems to radiate through the entire novel. What she did for her daughters was immense. It was admirable, frankly. Any parent would do what Marie Elise did and I can’t say I much care for how wrong it was. Nope, I just admire her for doing it.

I really enjoyed The First Day of the Rest of my Life. It isn’t a light and fluffy read, it isn’t something you’re going to smile about, even if it did make me laugh in places, mainly whenever Marie Elise was around. Those who are somewhat faint-hearted will not enjoy learning what happened to Madeline and Annie; I consider myself rather strong-hearted and even I was sickened by it all. I’d definitely recommend the book. I wasn’t entirely sure, when I started it, if it was my kind of thing but I sort of sunk into the book more and more as I read it. It slowly but surely sucked me in until I could barely put it down. I’ll definitely be picking up Cathy Lamb’s other books. She’s a very honest author and she tells her stories with conviction. The characters were so unique which really helped the novel, and I just enjoyed the novel, I really did.

Friday Night With The Girls by Shari Low

You should write it all down, Lou, so that your daughter can understand what happened. Everything. Right from the start.’ Lou Cairney’s life has never been dull. But through twenty years of ups, downs and really bad hairstyles, Lou has had the best friends a woman could hope for in Lizzy and Ginger. Growing up together, they shared their dreams and their disasters, broken hearts and career crashes and they survived it all thanks to love, hope and a large dollop of humour. And cocktails. Lots of cocktails. Until now. Lou needs her friends more than ever because her past has just caught up with her in a shocking way. Everyone makes mistakes in life – but Lou has just discovered that she might have made the biggest one of all…

Shari Low isn’t an author I’ve experienced before. I know Chloe enjoys her novels. However I received a proof copy of her newest book Friday Night With The Girls and because I was already waiting on another book (that didn’t show!), I hadn’t already started something and Friday Night With The Girls looked great – and fairly short, which is great since I love to finish books the same day I start them (yes, I’m strange) – so I decided to give it a read and break my Shari Low duck. I’m rather pleased I did because Friday Night With The Girls was a brilliant read, one I thoroughly enjoyed.

Friday Night With The Girls, as you might expect from the title, tells the story of the friendship between Lou, Lizzy and Ginger and how they meet most Friday nights for drinks and chat. So much Chick Lit focuses on the romance between the main female and male characters and friendships do seem to be pushed to the side. Which is, of course, a surprise since female friendships are meant to be huge and not worth losing when a man comes along. So Friday Night With The Girls was a very, very welcome change. I don’t remember the last novel I read where friendship was the main element of the book. The novel starts in present day Glasgow as the three girls meet for a weekend spa break and then goes back into the past – the 80s, 90s culminating in the return to the present and how all three girls got there with their friendship in tact.

It did take me a few pages to get my bearings with the novel and with the constant backwards and forward of the book, but it was easy enough to follow, and I loved revisiting the times in the girl’s lives that defined their relationship. There are many ups and downs that Lou, Ginger and Lizzy go through – marriages, divorces, injuries, finding true love, having kids – I don’t think there was anything Low left out. If it’s possible to happen, it happened, and the good thing was it wasn’t in any way over the top. Some Chick Lit novels barely encompass a few weeks so it was refreshing to learn everything there was possibly to learn about the girls, and it definitely helped to provide a more rounder picture of them all.

I absolutely loved all three girls. Lou is the narrator of the novel, but we very easily get to know Lizzy and Ginger just as good (and they do have their own chapter or two where they narrate, too). I thought Lou was a wonderful character and I wanted nothing more than to join all three girls at the spa they were visiting and reminisce right along with them. All three girls are entirely different, Lou is the hopeless romantic with the sensible head when it comes to everything else, Lizzy is the clumsy one and Ginger is the loud-mouth who likes a drink. The rubbed off each other well, and if Low knows how to write anything it’s female friendship. I thought Lou’s Aunt Josie was a Godsend, and I loved how she treated Lou far better than Lou’s parents ever did. She was the mother Lou should have had.

There was a surprising twist to the book that I didn’t see coming. I was sitting and wondering what was going to happen, because it seemed as though all the build up was for a reason of some sort but I was surprised at what that reason was. It was handled sensitively though and I was desperate to know the outcome of it. I thought Friday Night With The Girls was brilliantly written and I enjoyed every page. It kept me reading, so much so that I abandoned my plans to watch a third episode of The Mentalist (it takes a LOT for me to give up Patrick Jane) in favour of finishing up this book. It certainly did not disappointed and I’m very pleased I decided to give it a read. I’d definitely recommend Friday Night With The Girls, it’s the ultimate novel if you’re a fan of friendships in Chick Lit and Low does it brilliantly well, she can definitely write a friendship and I’ll be looking out for her next novel. Definitely recommended.

Question is, which would you pick up?

It’s 1999 and for the staff of one newspaper office, the internet is still a novelty. By day, two young women, Beth and Jennifer, spend their hours emailing each other, discussing in hilarious detail every aspect of their lives, from love troubles to family dramas. And by night, Lincoln, a shy, lonely IT guy spends his hours reading every exchange. At first their emails offer a welcome diversion, but as Lincoln unwittingly becomes drawn into their lives, the more he reads, the more he finds himself falling for one of them. By the time Lincoln realizes just how head-over-heels he really is, it’s way too late to introduce himself. What would he say to her? ‘Hi, I’m the guy who reads your e-mails – and also, I think I love you’. After a series of close encounters, Lincoln decides it’s time to muster the courage to follow his heart … and find out whether there really is such a thing as love before first-sight.

Long, irregular hours; occasional risk of injury; often smelly and dirty. Job satisfaction guaranteed. This is the life Maz Harwood signed up to when she became a vet, and she has never regretted it. She now has a beautiful baby boy, George, and she will be marrying fellow vet, Alex Fox-Gifford, at Christmas. But recently things have become difficult. Because between arranging the wedding, performing life-saving animal surgery, and taking care of George, there hasn’t been much time left for poor Alex. So Maz decides to take things into her own hands – with terrible consequences for all concerned. As Christmas draws near, Maz realises that she’s going to need more than a miracle for her and Alex to make it up the aisle and rekindle the love they had once shared.

Slave to the rich, rude and deluded, cosmetic surgery receptionist Serenity Holland longs for the day she’s a high-flying tabloid reporter. Unfortunately, every pitch she sends out disappears like her clients’ liposuctioned fat, never to be seen again. Then she meets Jeremy Ritchie — the hang-dog man determined to be Britain’s Most Eligible Bachelor by making himself over from head to toe and everything in between — giving Serenity a story no editor could resist.

With London’s biggest tabloid on board and her very own column tracking Jeremy’s progress from dud to dude, Serenity is determined to be a success, even going undercover to gain intimate access to Jeremy’s life. But when Jeremy’s surgery goes drastically wrong and Serenity is ordered to cover all the car-crash goriness, she must decide how far she really will go for her dream job.

The Time of my Life by Cecelia Ahern

The stunning and magical new novel from the Number One bestselling author. Lying on Lucy Silchester’s carpet one day when she returns from work is a gold envelope. Inside is an invitation – to a meeting with Life. Her life. It turns out she’s been ignoring it and it needs to meet with her face to face. It sounds peculiar, but Lucy’s read about this in a magazine. Anyway, she can’t make the date: she’s much too busy despising her job, skipping out on her friends friends and avoiding her family. But Lucy’s life isn’t what it seems. Some of the choices she’s made – and stories she’s told – aren’t what they seem either. From the moment she meets the man who introduces himself as her life, her stubborn half-truths are going to be revealed in all their glory – unless Lucy learns to tell the truth about what really matters to her. Lucy Silchester has an appointment with her life – and she’s going to have to keep it. Touching, warm, funny and poignant, Cecelia Ahern’s new novel explores what happens when you stop paying attention to your life.

I love Cecelia Ahern. She’s one of my favourite authors because none of her books are the same as any other. She manages to somehow come up with plots no other author would ever attempt and her originality knows no bounds. PS, I Love You is one of my favourite books ever and I’ve enjoyed all of her other books, particularly The Book of Tomorrow, so when a new book was finally announced, I was thrilled. The Time of my Life is Cecelia’s eighth novel and it’s just as unique and just as original as all of her other books. In fact, if it didn’t have Cecelia’s name on it I wouldn’t have known it was her as it’s a very different novel to The Book of Tomorrow. (Yes, I know I said Cecelia is very unique, but this one seems much more different.)

The Time of my Life is an interesting novel. I found it hard to really “feel” the novel as Lucy is one of those heroines you love to hate and when you write a book you want your heroine to make her mark and although Lucy did make her mark, it wasn’t necessarily a good one and I found it hard to really root for her. I get that she’s like that – after all, if she was lovely and warm and witty and inviting, then she wouldn’t NEED to meet her Life. She wouldn’t need Life’s help to make her life better than it is. So although I did get that Lucy needed to be a bit unlikeable, it still didn’t really help. I want a heroine I can root for and although I tried my hardest to root for Lucy, at times she just seemed beyond help and I wanted to slap her; to tell her to grow up.

The plot, however, is fantastic. I love the idea that if your life isn’t as good as it should be then you’ll get an appointment with your Life. I mean, that’s so awesome and inventive and, well, I loved Cosmo. (Cosmo is Lucy’s Life, that’s what she/he decided on for a name.) I liked that Cosmo didn’t just let Lucy get away with the lies she told and that he called her up on the way she lived her life. I liked how he was there for her and wanted to help her and to make her be more than she could be. The plot very much kept me reading, and I also liked the addition of Lucy’s wrong number man whom she ends up talking to after dialling a wrong number. Both Cosmo (I love that name) and Don (the wrong number man) help with Lucy’s edginess and the excellent plot kept me reading. If the novel had been solely about Lucy, I’d have given up long ago, but the plot and the secondary characters kept the novel going very well.

As you might already have realised, Lucy wasn’t my favourite ever character. Her family didn’t help; the Silchester’s were quite horrible people, with the exception of her mother and brothers, and they’d definitely helped to shape her into the edgy, somewhat bitter person she became. I could understand her hesitance to change her life and trust Cosmo, but on the other hand, I just wanted her to embrace everything for once instead of trying to fight it. She does redeem herself somewhat and she isn’t always awful, but it’s hard to get over the first impressions I had of her; I want to be taken in by a character from page one, not feel as if I’m somehow imposing on her life. The secondary characters were brilliant and I really liked Cosmo and Don and Lucy’s friends.

The Time of my Life is definitely a bit different to Cecelia’s other novels. It was enjoyable enough and in the end, I warmed to Lucy. However first impressions of her are hard to bypass and I feel a lot of people will take an instant dislike to her. But she’s worth persevering with. I mean it’s Cecelia Ahern. She’s always worth reading and although it wasn’t quite on par with The Book of Tomorrow (which was ridiculously, insanely good) I still liked it. It was far from perfect and despite enjoying the plot, it was indeed a sharper read than I expected. I’d definitely recommend the book – of course I would, Cecelia Ahern could write a computer manual and I’d still recommend it – and it’s definitely a book I’d read again. It’s definitely a book I’m going to try and get a finished copy of (I know, I’m a sucker for a beautiful book). Cecelia’s writing is as on top as ever, and I can’t wait for what she comes up with next and I’m fairly sure this will be as big a bestseller as her other novels.