Saturday 1 December 2012

Thursdays in the Park by Hilary Boyd


I have had Thursdays in the Park sitting on my kindle for a little while now and when It started getting called “granny-lit” I had to move this to the front of my To Be Read list to see what on earth this book could be about to be called a granny-lit I was just hoping that at 27 years of age I would be OK reading this!

PLOT
What do you do if you've been married to a man for half your life and out of nowhere he leaves your bed – permanently? When this happens to Jeanie, she's furious and hurt, and determined to confront George, her husband of thirty years. Is he in love with someone else? What did she do wrong? He won't tell her. 

The brightest day of her week is Thursday, the day Jeanie takes her granddaughter to the park. There, one day, she meets Ray and his grandson. Ray is kind, easy to talk to, and gorgeous – everything George isn't. She starts to live for Thursdays. But does she have the courage, in the teeth of opposition from all sides, to turn her life upside down for another shot at love?

I think the whole term “granny-lit” is going to be met with the same angry faces as “chick-lit” but please don’t let this term put you off because I actually really enjoyed this book. It made a change to have a main character who is approaching 60 as our typical heroines tend to be 25-35 years of age so this made for a nice change reading about the older generation. Jeanie is a very realistic character who leads a very normal life and she is in a marriage that has had its ups and downs and unfortunately like a lot of marriages Jeanie can feel her marriage slipping away. I love how realistic the whole of this book felt nothing seemed far-fetched it almost felt as though Jeanie was a friend sitting there telling you her story.

The majority of the book did flow well but towards the end it did feel as though it was being drawn out a bit and going around in circles but it wasn’t long before the storyline got on track again and then tied us up with a perfect ending. I also found the baby talk from Ellie was a little grating but I often find this when authors try to write a young character into a story.

The book covers a wide range of issues such as abuse, secrecy and affairs but one thing that it is not heavy on ( just in case you believe all you read in the media) is sex. Yes there are a couple of sex scenes but they are not graphic or distasteful, they are fitting in with the storyline and do not make you feel uncomfortable.

This is definitely worth reading especially at the current Kindle price of only 20p !


Kindle                      Paperback

1 comment:

  1. Great review, just bought this due to your review

    Lainy http://www.alwaysreading.net

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