Million Love Songs by Carole Matthews

You need an awful lot of Patience to get through this book and no opportunity for a Take That song title pun is missed; somehow I guessed that would be the case from the title but I didn't realise going in how far that would be carried through in the book.  To be entirely fair this isn't a bad book, it just isn't a great one.  It is warm and surprisingly witty but it certainly didn't Relight My Fire (see, she's got me at it now!).

Ruby is a very relatable character.  She makes mistakes, she readily admits she has no clue what she is actually doing in life and drifts along from disaster to ill-advised fumble to moments of heart warming friendship.  She is startlingly normal for the heroine of this genre and I did find myself smirking at her antics.  Fir the record though I think she would have been much better off with Mason - at least he made her laugh and Joe is far too weighed down by his emotional baggage to ever make a good life partner.

I did enjoy the strength of friendship in the book and Ruby's determination to try and make lemonade from every lemon life dealt her.  She is not one of these relentlessly upbeat, perfect heroines either, she is deeply flawed and prone to emotional wallowing which made her all the more engaging to read about - simply because she is so "normal".  That said I don't think I would particularly like a real life Ruby, she is one of those people best kept to a page I fear.

This is a nice un-challenging commuter read that entertains for a brief period of time but doesn't really make you ache to get to the next chapter.