Facing up to Forty! (Life Begins - Amanda Brookfield)

Member Name: kingfisher111

Product:	Life Begins - Amanda Brookfield
Date:	22/02/09 (371 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: interesting story

Disadvantages: hard to get in to

Amanda Brookfield is one of my favourite authors and I tend to anticipate her new books with relish. She tends to write about normal everyday people who seem to have more than their fair share of ups and downs in life. This is exactly the case with her latest offering 'Life Begins' which centres on an almost forty year old divorced woman and her rather unpredictable life!

The central chaaracter is Charlotte Turner who is recently divorced from Martin with whom she has a somewhat acrimonious relationship. They do however have to keep communicating with each other because of their thirteen year old son Sam. Added to this Charlotte has a difficult relationship with her own mother but she does have a good support network of friends.

As the story progresses her complicated life becomes even more complicated due to Sam getting into trouble at school, various love interests including the unwanted attentions of her best friend's husband and the local estate agent who is trying to sell her house, and her mother suffering a bad fall which results in Charlotte having to care for her for a while. As is typical with this type of book, there are all sorts of unexpected happenings, misunderstandings and things generally going wrong every time it looks like they might be going right! In fact it's the perfect mix for a really good read but for some reason I found it very difficult to get in to.

I liked Charlotte's character and found that I could also relate to her. All the other characters were well rounded and believeable too and the various relationships were not unlikely. Nothing that happened was too far fetched so I don't know why this book did not draw me in as much as I expected. I don't want to dismiss it though because the last hundred pages really gathered momentum and finally I found myself not wanting to put it down. As there are 400 pages in the book though, this was rather a lengthy wait before being hooked in.

On reflection though, it's a pretty good story and it was fascinating to see how Charlotte changed until she was able to reach a point where she could actually say she was happy. It's also a novel about relationships and what I liked was that, at the heart of the novel, was Charlotte's relationship with her son Sam. This definitely was not portrayed through rose coloured glasses and I'm sure that many parents of teenage boys could easily recognise the sometimes sulky and uncommunicative Sam!

There are many different storylines to follow in this book but they all do interweave together pretty well and if you stick with it it will be a satisfying and enjoyable read.

My paperback copy is published by Penguin books and is just over 400 pages long. At the moment you can buy it on Amazon for £5.49.

Summary: A good read but not one of her best!