More From Life by S. J. Crabb

2.5 Stars

This is a fun, light read and it definitely ticks the escapism box.  Nothing here can be taken too seriously which is both in the story's favour and to it's detriment.  It's sheer frothiness both beguiles and repels the reader.  I found myself really enjoying the rather cliched ride for a number of pages and then becoming completely disenfranchised by it.  Very odd to say the least, but at least it made me feel something whilst reading and that has to be good, doesn't it?

It also features one of my trigger issues - the store is Tesco and NOT Tescos - throughout the tale it is referred too in the plural (not the possessive) and it drove me ever so batty.  Yes, a tiny, inconsequential little thing but one that irritates me no end on an almost daily basis.  Throw in a lot of colloquial language and a whole ship's worth of cliches and you could be forgiven for dismissing this as a swing and a miss in an overpopulated genre.  However, there are some little glimpses of a talented storyteller peeking through and the odd genuine reflection on life after divorce, life during and after the menopause.  Regrettably, in this book they are only glimpses.

The biggest problem for me was the relationship between Amanda and her teenaged children.  It was all pretty much made-for-TV movie cliche and the fact that Amanda couldn't see how stifling she was being whilst blaming them for ignoring her made me quite mad.  I also hated that when forced to spend a week with their father and his new wife both offspring suddenly realised how important Amanda was.  This is a familiar trope and one that I have never had the misfortune to see in real life, so much so I am beginning to think that it is purely a fictitious construct.

Despite all the above I did find the overall story to be rather charming - even if so far removed from reality as to be almost a fantasy.  Honestly, the whole holiday thing is beyond the bounds of plausibility and throw in the rather naive romance and it does feel cloying as well as fantastical.  Somehow, I didn't hate it and my brain tells me I really should have but my heart tells me it enjoyed the devil may care, throw reality to the wind nature of the plot and the rather breezy, almost inconsequential telling.

In fact, that is what I took away from the book - an author that made me have fun with characters that have little depth, an author with a rather limited vocabulary for dialogue, an author that managed to entertain me despite everything.  Critically this is a flop.  Emotionally I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  Surprisingly I found myself looking up the author's previous works and adding them to my shopping list.