If you thought your in-laws were bad.... (Keeping it in the Family - Sinead Moriarty)

Member Name: Lbird99

Product:	Keeping it in the Family - Sinead Moriarty
Date:	16/05/09 (24 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great Read!!

Disadvantages: None

I was really itching to get my hands on Sinead Moriarty's latest novel, so when I found Keeping it in the Family in Asda as part of there 2 for £7 promotion I was really chuffed. I loved The Baby Trail series, so was sure I would enjoy this one. The cover looks like standard chick lit, with a picture of a house with a couple at the door on the front with the title in metallic blue on the front.

The heroine of the story is Niamh O'Flaherty, a journalist in Dublin. Niamh's family are very Irish. Her father moved to London to make a better life for himself and his family, but is fully integrated into the Irish community there. When Niamh went to study in Ireland and later settled there he had high hopes of her settling down with a nice Irish lad. His other daughter Sinead had a shotgun wedding while still a teenager, so all his hopes are pinned on Niamh for a big white wedding.

Unfortunately Niamh has fallen in love with the gorgeous Pierre, an older linguistic professor, who couldn't be less Irish if he tried. When Pierre is offered a great job in Canada, and proposes to Niamh it is time for them both to meet each others parents. Jean and Fleur are not very impressed to find their only son is marrying a fluffy newspaper columnist who cannot cook, butythere reaction is going to mild compared to Annie and Mick O'Flaherty's.........

The book is wtitten in the first person from Niamh's perspective. It starts in 1998 when she first meets pierre and flits between the past and the present. I'm not sure if this is a book that Sinead Moriarty wrote a while ago as the time doesn't seem to progress much past 1999 - although that doesn't detract any from the story. The past focuses on Niamh as a teenager, getting to grips with growing up - first kisses, drinking and dancing, while trying to tow the family line. She is seem as the rebel in the family, she wants to do tap dancing, while her sister Sinead excels at the preferred Irish dancing. Sinead is the clever one, while Niamh struggles, and she feels her family wishes she was more like her older sister. However that all changes when Sinead falls pregnant at 17, and she suddenly finds herself as the apple of her fathers eye. The build up of the story is really important, as it helps explain why Niamh is finding so herd to tell her family about Pierre.

The story is really well written, and Sinead Moriarty is certainly going the right way to establish herself as one of the great Irish Chick Lit writers, such as Marian Keyes, and Patricia Scanlan, and I would recommend it to any fans of these authors. It broaches taboos that we all know exist but are rarely touched upon in chick lit, and are tackled in such a way that the book stays as a light read. It is definitely one that I couldn't put down, and I was desperate to get the baby to sleep at night so I could curl up with it!!!

Summary: You won't put it down!