Plenty of reasons to read the book (10 Reasons Not to Fall in Love - Linda Green)

Member Name: abbadabbado

Product:	10 Reasons Not to Fall in Love - Linda Green
Date:	09/08/09 (56 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: a good read that was easy to pick up

Disadvantages: some disbelievable parts

After reading a review of this book on here, I knew I was going to have to read it myself. I got lucky last week when I was in the library, and set about reading it straight away.

Jo has found herself being a single parent to Alfie after her ex partner Richard left them both on Alfie's first birthday.
Fast forward a year and we meet Jo as Alfie is about to turn two years old, and Jo is approaching the end of her maternity leave to go back to work as a television journalist. Her boss is none other than her ex partner and Alfie's Dad, Richard.

Jo comes across in the book as a well grounded parent who has come out the other end of a sad break up with her head held high. Despite wanting a career, and never really thinking about having children, Jo has adapted well to being a parent and found maternal instincts she never knew she had.
Going back to work for your ex partner would be very difficult at the best of times for anyone to deal with, but to go back to a stressful environment on a part time basis is proving to be a challenge for Jo as she struggles to stay professional when she wants to get home for her son, and her son's father is insisting she puts the job first.

Alfie is a bubbly two year old who comes across as very intelligent for his young years. His speech and understanding is probably a bit too advanced for just two, but it helps the book flow so I wont criticise too much. Perhaps I would have placed Alfie at being three years old if I was the author.

By reading about Richard, and the character that he is, we quickly learn why the book has the title it does, but of course there is the sub text on the front of the book "And one man to prove them wrong".
Quite early on in the book we meet the man of the moment, Dan. He is a children's entertainer, living on a boat near Jo's home.
Alfie clearly adores Dan and a relationship soon sparks between Dan and Jo. It's kept platonic for a log while through the book as we learn more about Dan as a character. To Jo, Dan's history is a closely guarded secret, but to us the reader, we are spoiled with the book dipping into Dan's past.
His history does help the book unfold into what turns out to be a complex plot for chick lit. Easy enough to follow, but the books turns away from Jo frequently to focus more on Dan.
To begin with I thought these chapters were a waste of time, but soon I was waiting for the next excerpt about Dan, so Linda Green was spot on with this method of writing for me.

Being chick lit, there are lots of soppy moments, heart wrenching scenes, and the odd tragedy thrown into the mix before anyone can think about a happy ending. This book is of course no different, and I found myself gripped in the life of Jo as I lived through her bringing Alfie up, and dealing with all the trials that go with it.

I thought the characters were written well and it was easy to get into the minds of Jo and Dan. Whilst there were parts of the storyline that I thought were a bit far fetched, Green managed to keep them on track and turn them into a decent outcome for the reader, so it wasn't too disbelieving.
Whilst I thought the characters were written well, I felt the environment wasn't written quite as well. Sometimes I struggled to believe and follow where we were in the book in terms of travelling to different places in the book. An example of this is Jo's house in relation to Dan's boat seemed a long walk in some pages, but in others it took a couple of seconds.
This aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, and as this was the first I have read by Linda Green, I will definitely be looking out for more.

ISBN: 978-0755333446
Published: 2009
Price: £3.92 (Amazon)

Summary: a good book by a new author to me