Reading My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes made me feel as if I was one of the Walsh family gang.
This story revisited Anna Walsh, who along with her sisters have featured in many of this author's previous books (for readers unfamiliar with these, there are five daughters in this family and various books have already followed each of them through various stages of their lives. The issues they have faced include alcoholism, marriage breakdown, death of loved ones, career and financial struggles and of course, romance). My Favourite Mistake could be read as a stand-alone novel.
In this story, Anna Walsh is now approaching 50. Menopause is setting in and she is bored with her boyfriend (blame living together during Covid lockdowns), fed up with her dream job in PR and her life in New York, and homesick for Ireland and her family, so Anna took off for Ireland and took on a temporary job helping old friends who are building a wellness retreat in a charming coastal village, where it seems, many, if not all of the men are 'rideable'.
However, not everyone in the village welcomes the retreat. There have been threats and actual damage done to the construction, so Anna steps in to wave her PR wand to pacify the locals and find out who is causing the vandalism. When she finds herself working with Joey Armstrong, a man she has known and had feelings for since she was in her twenties, things got even more complicated. Anna finds Joey very 'rideable', although he had already been 'ridden' by Anna's sister, her best friend, a workmate, and three-quarters of the women in New York and Ireland.
The story started slowly and for a while, I thought about not finishing. Then, about a quarter of the way through, the magic happened and I connected with the characters and began caring about their stories. By the end, I was enjoying the humour, particularly the wise-cracking dialogue.
I liked that the main character was almost 50 and still interested in romance, and better yet, that her romantic interests (yes, plural) were also interested in her. I liked that women's health issues were discussed openly and that the characters talked about Botox and HRT and the types of romantic complications that rarely make it into fiction.
However, the book was at least 100 pages too long, the thriller aspect of the story was entirely predictable and so was the ending. For fans of Marian Keyes and the Walsh family though, My Favourite Mistake will be a happy, comfortable read.
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