Wilde Like Me by Louise Pentland

          I think I am one of the few people who didn't find Robin Wilde "delightful".  Yes, I get it being a single mum is hard, trying to carve your way in life is hard, loneliness is hard.  The universal truth is life is hard.  Admittedly, it is unusual for a book to use this as a jumping off point and to describe those feelings and I did think the term "The Emptiness" was a wonderful description - so much better then "the black dog".

However, I could not warm to the main character at all.  I know how debilitating depression and low self-esteem are and I still found her to be whiny and completely self-absorbed.  Everything was about how she was feeling and it didn't matter that her best friend was eaten up by her inability to conceive or that her Auntie Kath was clearly unwell.  Robin just worried about Robin and then a little bit about her daughter and then it was back to worrying about Robin again.

The book itself is fairly well written and I particularly loved the PSMs.  The school gate one-upmanship was hilarious and accurate no matter whether Public or Private.  The tale does jog along quite nicely even if I did have to grit my teeth to get through quite a lot of it and the cautionary tale of letting your child use you phone to see a pink snake did make me snicker.

The plot is fairly light so you can pick up and put down again after a chapter or two and I never felt any real incentive to keep reading.  Apart from the character of Robin we never really get to know anyone else within the book which is a shame as her two new friends, Finola and the other one whose name escapes me, seem to have great potential as fictional people.  Auntie Kath deserves a book all about herself as well.  The romance angle was a bit of a non-starter too as Robin's decisions in that department were largely deplorable, although it did make me realise I am not cut out for dating anymore if that's what its really like.

Overall it passes the time and will raise a few giggles but I just couldn't connect with the main character and if you don't then it kind of ruins the whole book as there isn't too much else to grab hold of.  I did give it 3 Stars as the writing flow is good and there are some genuinely funny moments in there.  Really it is a solid 2.5 Stars but I am feeling a little generous today.