Thursday, November 09, 2017

2017 book 193

Marian Keyes' Watermelon
Rainbow Rowell recently recommended the fifth book in this series on Twitter, but I am a completist and so I started with book one. The series focuses on five sisters from an Irish family; in this first one, eldest sister Claire has just given birth when her husband announces that he's leaving her for another woman. Like literally, the day she gives birth! So she goes home to Dublin to stay with her parents and two youngest sisters (I loved the sister relationships here) to try and figure out what to do next. At first I was like, this is a cute mid-90s women’s fiction sort of story with occasionally brilliant humor, but towards the end I was super engaged with the heroine's emotional journey—it just really resonated with conversations I am having with friends right now. There is a great moment where she just runs out of f—ks entirely and I was practically cheering. I will say that this did not seem like an accurate depiction of new motherhood to me, but it was a very entertaining story and I already have the rest of the series checked out from the library. A-/B+.

No comments: