The Happy Home For Ladies by Lilly Bartlett and Michele Gorman

The setting for this book is a country house that has been turned in to a residential home for ladies - and ladies only.  With a token male on the staff, a barely there male owner and a cantankerous male neighbour the first thing you notice is that the book is resolutely anti-male.  You always expect a little bit of this to creep in to any book in the genre but men are dealt with quite harshly in this book.  Even Phoebe's almost stalker like crush on Nick doesn't allow us to see him as more than an object of desire.  As you can probably tell, the lack of gender balance in the book annoyed me.

We are promised that this is "an hilarious romcom".  No, it really is not either of those things.  Without exception the relationships described in this book are severely toxic.  I struggled to find even a smirk let alone a laugh whilst reading.  The only thing that saved this book from the ignominy of the 1 Star review was that some of the scenes set in the home were actually quite endearing - particularly the friendship that burgeons between Lacey and Maggie, two long time residents that seemingly have nothing in common but become each other's support network.

Some of the themes raised in the book could do with further exploration and if the authors had stuck to extrapolating on those and made this book about friendships and the perceptions of the older generation then I think it could have been a much better book.  Phoebe, and the home manager Jane, are both pretty much unlikeable characters - as a narrator Phoebe grated on my nerves because any view she presents I perceived as skewed to paint her in the best possible light when half of the time she was merely reaping what she sowed.

I was relieved to complete this book and very disappointed having enjoyed some of Ms Bartlett's previous output - maybe it was the collaboration that scuppered the book?